diff --git a/changelogs/fragments/64032-zabbix_template_fix_return_XML_as_a_string_even_python3.yml b/changelogs/fragments/64032-zabbix_template_fix_return_XML_as_a_string_even_python3.yml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..b11b6306d1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelogs/fragments/64032-zabbix_template_fix_return_XML_as_a_string_even_python3.yml
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+bugfixes:
+  - Fix to return XML as a string even for python3 (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/64032).
diff --git a/lib/ansible/modules/monitoring/zabbix/zabbix_template.py b/lib/ansible/modules/monitoring/zabbix/zabbix_template.py
index 275288d7f5..c93e77a5cd 100644
--- a/lib/ansible/modules/monitoring/zabbix/zabbix_template.py
+++ b/lib/ansible/modules/monitoring/zabbix/zabbix_template.py
@@ -454,7 +454,7 @@ class Template(object):
         try:
             dump = self._zapi.configuration.export({'format': template_type, 'options': {'templates': template_ids}})
             if template_type == 'xml':
-                return str(ET.tostring(ET.fromstring(dump.encode('utf-8')), encoding='utf-8'))
+                return str(ET.tostring(ET.fromstring(dump.encode('utf-8')), encoding='utf-8').decode('utf-8'))
             else:
                 return self.load_json_template(dump)