The Ultimate Guide to Spanish Future Tense

“The past, present, and future walked into a bar ... it was tense.”

(We claim no credit for that so-bad-it’s-good joke!)

The future tense is obviously very important for—well—talking about the future. Whether you want to talk about your intended future plans or some other inevitability, you’ll need the future tense.

How to form the future tense

Apart from the irregular ones, the formation of the future tense is pretty simple. All you do is take the infinitive and add on the appropriate ending:

As well as being used to say what will happen, the future tense can be used in the sense of ordering someone to do something (“you WILL tidy your room”) and in the sense of ‘I suppose it must be the case’ (“she’ll be in her room, I reckon”). Let’s check out some examples of the various uses.

*A note about stress/emphasis: the bold letters in the table below show where the stress/emphasis will fall in the future tense.

This doesn’t change, which means that sometimes you’ll have to alter a stem. For instance, when we put reír into the future tense, we remove the accent from the ‘i' then add the appropriate ending, so that the stress stays on the bold syllable:

reír → Pancho reirá

Exceptions

As usual in Spanish, there are exceptions to the rule. These need to be learnt, but luckily it only includes the stems, not the endings. For example, for ‘to want,’ instead of querer + é, we change the stem so we get querr + é.

Here are the main ones:

*When the verb haber is used to mean ‘there is’/’there are’ or ‘there will be,’ it is always left in the singular, even if you’re saying that there are loads of things:

Hay un ordenador .–> There is a computer.

Hay tres ordenadores. –> There are three computers.

Habrá un ordenador. –> There will be a computer.

Trigger Phrases

There are certain phrases that you can use to introduce the future tense. If you want to use these phrases, just get your stem, choose your ending, and you’re ready to go!

Test

1. Iré a Puerto Rico el año que viene.

2. Ganaremos el partido.

3. Habrá mucha gente.

Now let’s take it up a notch, and go from English to Spanish ...

4. I’ll always love Pablo.

5. Don’t worry, you (singular, informal) will do a good job.

6. Catrina will cook.

7. We’ll vote in the election tomorrow.

8. You (plural, informal) will smile at the prince.

9. They’ll call the police.

BONUS question (extra hard!)

10. Don’t worry! One day, the car will be worth loads, and you’ll be able to sell it. You’ll have lots of money.

Well done if you made it to the end of the test!

Conclusion

Today you’ve learnt a new tense which you can use to talk about the future, give commands, and make suppositions. Try and practice a couple of phrases daily, and you’ll soon have mastered the future tense!

Learn how to conjugate Spanish verbs without rote memorization. See below for details.