The single's commercial release was delayed several times and was poorly promoted, being affected by Halliwell's departure and the subsequent continuation of the Spiceworld Tour by the remaining members.

An accompanying music video, directed by Steve Box, features stop motion animation of the group as fairies, and it took five months to be completed.

[3] Their schedule was physically arduous with logistical difficulties,[2] as Melanie Brown commented in her autobiography: "doing the two full-time jobs at the same time took its toll and within a couple on weeks, exhaustion set in".

[5] Andy Watkins, of the production duo Absolute, co-writers of "Who Do You Think You Are" (from the band's previous album) remembered: "We'd sit there literally all day long and quite often we wouldn't even get them at all."

Eliot Kennedy, who co-wrote "Say You'll Be There" with the group, worked on a couple of backing tracks for Spiceworld, but decided not to get involved in the album after hearing from the other teams about the complications of the recording schedule.

[13] The song starts with an instrumental introduction that includes keyboards, an acoustic guitar played by John Themis, and a string section arranged by English composer Anne Dudley.

Tom Ewing from the e-zine Freaky Trigger described it as "wistful music",[15] while Alexis Petridis of The Guardian said that the song has a "note of melancholy" around it.

[7] Ewing believed the song encapsulates a very specific moment that he described as "memories of summer love fading at the edges", although he said lyrically, it "does nothing unexpected, and it never makes a move when there's a cheesier one available".

[14] In February 1998, the Spice Girls embarked on the Spiceworld Tour covering Europe and North America, in support of their second studio album.

[17] On 22 April 1998, Smash Hits magazine reported the release of the album's fourth single for 25 May, a double A-side consisting of "Viva Forever" with "Never Give Up on the Good Times", a disco influenced track from Spiceworld that was written by the group with Stannard and Rowe.

[31] In late June 1998, the song started to receive airplay across the UK, appearing on the playlists of 46 ILR stations and Capital FM's the Pepsi Chart.

[38][39] The first one, an enhanced CD, included the radio edit of the song, an instrumental take, and a remix version by American singer-songwriter and producer Tony Rich.

Music complimented the song, saying "a tear-jerking flamenco guitar and lush strings weave into this break-your-heart, 'I Will Always Love You' ballad with a touch of Madonna about it [...] inspired".

Lying amidst the caricatured frivolously fun Spiceworld, this track emits a level of musicianship that the Spice Girls had rarely shown to such extent before.

[46] Rolling Stone magazine's David Wild cited the song as an example of the album's production of a "rehash of hip-hop and pop clichés", with him adding it is "as convincing as the Spices' Spanish accents".

[11] Writing for the Orange County Register, Cary Darling named the song one of Spiceworld's standout tracks for its "appealing, 'Fernando'-era ABBA internationalism".

[48] The staff of the Daily Record considered it the best track in the album,[12] while Smash Hits' critic Alex Needham lauded it as "the best thing they've ever done".

[53] The Hartford Courant's music writer Roger Catlin, noted the similarities between the two songs and commented that Madonna was "the obvious role model".

[54] Ann Powers of The New York Times described the song as "an earnest ballad" and felt that it resembles the sound of Madonna's early albums.

[55] When comparing Spiceworld to their debut studio album Spice (1996), Jim Farber of the New York Daily News was unimpressed, but thought that the production had more variety.

[88] The video was screened for the first time in the UK on 22 June 1998,[89] after five months of shooting, considerably longer than it took to make the Spice World movie.

[90] For the fairies, Box created five 12-inch-high tin puppets with wings modelled after each group member, including one for Halliwell, as it was commissioned months before her departure.

[90] He commented that the concepts for the video came from children's annuals, such as the comic strip character Rupert Bear,[88] and from Victorian legends of fairies at the bottom of the garden.

The show's producer, Chris Cowey, said that they originally intended to air the performance for the single's release in July, but then pushed it given Halliwell's departure from the Spice Girls.

[22] On 13 May 1998, the group taped an appearance for the French television show Hit Machine, where they performed four songs, including "Viva Forever".

[102] For the Spiceworld Tour, during their performance of "Viva Forever", the group dressed in long white opera-style coats, designed by British stylist Kenny Ho.

[103] The performance at the tour's final concert can be found on the video album Spice Girls Live at Wembley Stadium, filmed in London on 20 September 1998,[104] and released on VHS around two months later.

[108] For the Spice World – 2019 Tour, after an interlude called Queer Tango, where two male dancers did a ballet routine before kissing at the end, they launched into the song dressed in flowing gowns.