¡Hola! Welcome to a new Spanish grammar lesson. In this lesson, we will learn how to conjugate verbs in the future tense in Spanish and how to form sentences to talk about the future events. Just like in other lessons, we will learn about this topic with simple explanations, several examples and grammar exercises that will help you evaluate your understanding of the topic. Let’s start…
The future tense in Spanish – El futuro simple
The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) defines the simple future tense in Spanish, “El futuro simple”, as:
An absolute time that expresses that something will exist or take place at a time after the moment of speech. The form “cantará”(will sing) is simple future in Spanish.
It is very easy to form the future tense in Spanish and it is a very useful tense in the language to talk about things that will happen in our lives or around us. The structure of the future simple is the equivalent to using the auxiliary “WILL” for the future in the English language, with some fundamental differences that we will cover right away.
The rules to form the future tense in Spanish
Conjugating verbs in the future tense in Spanish
In order to be able to form the future tense in Spanish, it is necessary to conjugate verbs following some specific rules, just as we do when forming the past tense, the simple present and other verb tenses in the language. In Spanish, we do not need an auxiliary verb like “WILL” to form the future of verbs. For this reason, we will simply modify the verb’s ending depending on the subject of the sentence. Unlike other verb tenses in Spanish, the ending of verbs in the future tense will be identical regardless of whether they end in -AR, -ER or -IR in infinitive. The following chart shows how to conjugate verbs with different endings in the future in Spanish:
| Sujeto | CANTAR | COMER | VIVIR |
| Yo | cantaré | comeré | viviré |
| Tú/Vos | cantarás | comerás | vivirás |
| El/Ella/Usted | cantará | comerá | vivirá |
| Nosotros | cantaremos | comeremos | viviremos |
| Vosotros | cantaréis | comeréis | viviréis |
| Ellos/Ustedes | cantarán | comerán | vivirán |
Notice that it is necessary to use “tilde” over the some of the last vowels in some of the future forms of verbs in Spanish, for example: “vivirá” (will live) o “comerán” (will eat). Here are some examples of sentences with the future tense in Spanish following the rules we presented above.
HABLAR – Yo hablaré con ella mañana. SPEAK – I’ll talk to her tomorrow. |
PARTICIPAR – ¿Tú participarás en la competencia? PARTICIPATE – Will you participate in the competition? |
BAILAR – Ana bailará en el musical del colegio. DANCING – Ana will dance in the school musical. |
RECOPILAR – Nosotros recopilaremos toda la información necesaria. COLLECT – We will collect all the necessary information. |
PENSAR – Ellos pensarán cómo solucionar esto rápidamente. THINK – They will think how to solve this quickly. |
BEBER – Beberé café y luego me iré de compras. DRINK – I’ll drink coffee and then I’ll go shopping. |
ENTENDER – Vos entenderás todo cuando estés grande. UNDERSTAND – You will understand everything when you are big. |
APRENDER – Pablo aprenderá francés en los próximos 6 meses. LEARN – Pablo will learn French in the next 6 months |
APARECER – ¿Vosotros apareceréis en el programa? APPEAR – Will you appear in the program? |
ABRIR – Mañana abriremos la tienda tempranito. OPEN – Tomorrow we will open the store very early. |
CONDUCIR – Pronto conducirás mejor… DRIVE – Soon, you will drive better… |
REÍR – Ustedes se reirán toda la noche cuando les cuente el chisme. REIR – You will laugh all night when I tell you the story. |
Irregular verbs and the future tense in Spanish
There are some verbs that apart from suffering a change in their ending in the future simple in Spanish, they need another change its stem (the initial part of the verb). These verbs with an irregular future tense in Spanish are:
Caber, decir, haber, hacer, poder, poner, querer, saber, salir, tener, valer y venir.
Here is a chart showing how to conjugate these irregular verbs in the future in Spanish. Play the recording to listen to their pronunciation.
| Verbo | Yo | Tú/Usted | Él/Ella | Nosotros | Vosotros | Ellos |
| HABER | habré | habrás | habrá | habremos | habréis | habrán |
| HACER | haré | harás | hará | haremos | haréis | harán |
| PODER | podré | podrás | podrá | podremos | podréis | podrán |
| SABER | sabré | sabrás | sabrá | sabremos | sabréis | sabrán |
| TENER | tendré | tendrás | tendrá | tendremos | tendréis | tendrán |
| CABER | cabré | cabrás | cabrá | cabremos | cabréis | cabrán |
| DECIR | diré | dirás | dirá | diremos | diréis | dirán |
| PONER | pondré | pondrás | pondrá | pondremos | pondréis | pondrán |
| QUERER | querré | querrás | querrá | querremos | querréis | querrán |
| VALER | valdré | valdrás | valdrá | valdremos | valdréis | valdrán |
| VENIR | vendré | vendrás | vendrá | vendremos | vendréis | vendrán |
As you can see in the previous chart, some verbs such as “DECIR” will change their stem from “DEC” to “DI”. Others, such as TENER, will change their stem from “TEN” to “TEND”. The rest of the verb will be conjugated following the rules we use for regular verbs. It is time to put into practice what we have covered in the lesson with the exercises of an interactive quiz. We hope this lesson was very useful to you.