German Future Tense: werden Plus the Infinitive (and Futur II)

German has a future tense, and German speakers spend a surprising amount of effort avoiding it.

That is the first thing to understand, and it saves you from sounding like a weather forecast. English reaches for will almost automatically. German reaches for the present tense and a time word, and keeps werden for the jobs only it can do. So this article teaches the form, which takes five minutes, and then spends most of its time on when to use it, which is where English speakers actually go wrong.

The present tense does most of the work

If a time word already says the action is in the future, German does not need a future tense:

Ich komme morgen. - I am coming tomorrow.

Wir gehen bald nach Hause. - We are going home soon.

Nächste Woche arbeite ich nicht. - I am not working next week.

None of those is lazy or informal. It is simply how German is spoken and written, in the kitchen and in the newspaper. English does a version of this too (the train leaves at eight, I am seeing her tomorrow), but German does it far more widely, for almost any future action that has a time marker or an obvious context.

If you learn one thing from this page, make it this: when in doubt, the present plus a time word is the safe choice.

Forming the future: werden plus the infinitive

When you do want the real future (German grammars call it Futur I), it has two parts. Conjugate werden in the present tense, and put the main verb in the infinitive at the very end of the clause.

Two forms are irregular and worth staring at for a moment. The du form is wirst, not werdest, and the er form is wird, with no t added to the d. Everything else is the stem werd- with the normal endings, which the verb conjugation article covers in full.

The infinitive never changes. That is the whole appeal of the construction: once you know six forms of one verb, every other verb in the language has a future tense, including the irregular ones. Er wird sprechen, er wird fahren, er wird essen - no vowel changes, no stems to memorise.

Where the infinitive goes

This is the same bracket you meet with the modal verbs: the conjugated verb sits in second position, the infinitive goes to the end, and everything else is packed in between.

Ich werde morgen mit meinem Vater nach Hause fahren. - I will drive home with my father tomorrow.

However much comes in the middle, the infinitive waits for the full stop. English puts will drive together; German splits it round the sentence like a pair of bookends, and German word order is mostly a set of rules about which slot gets what.

Three positions to know:

• Statement: werden second, infinitive last. Morgen werde ich arbeiten. Note that when morgen takes first place, werde still sits second and the subject moves after it.
• Question: werden jumps to the front. Wirst du kommen? (Will you come?) With a question word, the question word comes first: Wann wirst du kommen?
• Subordinate clause: after weil, dass or wenn, werden joins the infinitive at the end, and goes last of all. Ich glaube, dass er kommen wird. (I think he will come.)

That last pattern is the one that trips people, because it reverses the order English speakers expect: infinitive first, then wird. Subordinate clauses explains why the verb is evicted to the end.

When German really does use werden

If the present tense covers so much, what is werden for? Four jobs, and they are worth learning as a list.

1. Predictions, especially without a time word. When nothing else in the sentence points forward, werden does it: Das wird schwer. (That is going to be hard.) Alles wird gut. (Everything will be fine.) Without wird, Das ist schwer would be about now.

2. Promises and firm intentions. Ich werde dir helfen. is a commitment, heavier than Ich helfe dir. Politicians and parents both lean on it for that reason. Ich werde es nie vergessen. - I will never forget it.

3. Guesses about the present. This is the use English speakers miss entirely. Er wird zu Hause sein. often means he is probably at home (right now), not he will be at home later. The future form turns a statement into an assumption, and German often adds wohl to make that explicit: Sie wird wohl müde sein. - She is probably tired. English does the same thing more rarely (that will be the postman), which is a useful hook.

4. Firm commands. Du wirst jetzt schlafen! - You are going to sleep, now. It is the tone of a parent who has stopped asking, and it is worth recognising even if you rarely need it.

Futur II: will have done

German has a second future, Futur II, built from werden, a past participle and the infinitive haben or sein:

Morgen werde ich das Buch gelesen haben. - By tomorrow I will have read the book.

Um acht wird er schon gegangen sein. - He will already have gone by eight.

The choice between haben and sein is exactly the choice you make in the perfect tense (movement and change of state take sein), so if you know er ist gegangen, you already know er wird gegangen sein.

Honesty about frequency: nobody needs to produce Futur II at A2, and even at B1 its main use in speech is not the future at all. It is the guessing job again, moved into the past: Er wird es vergessen haben. means he will have forgotten it, in the sense of he has probably forgotten it. That sentence is common. Morgen werde ich das Buch gelesen haben is mostly found in grammar books. Recognise Futur II, and do not lose sleep over producing it.

werden has three jobs, not one

Here is the source of most of the confusion. werden is not a special future word like English will. It is an ordinary verb meaning to become, which German also recruits for the future and for the passive.

The rule for telling them apart is mechanical: look at what sits at the end of the clause. A noun or adjective means become. An infinitive means future. A participle means passive. Ich werde müde has no infinitive in it, so it is not a future at all: it means I am getting tired.

Mistakes English speakers make

Using will as will. Ich will gehen means I want to go. English will and German will share a spelling and nothing else useful. If you mean the future, the verb is werden: Ich werde gehen.

Using werden for every future. Ich werde morgen ins Büro gehen, und dann werde ich essen, und dann werde ich... is grammatical and exhausting. Once a time word has set the scene, drop into the present: Morgen gehe ich ins Büro und esse dann.

Putting the infinitive in the middle. Ich werde gehen morgen follows English order and is wrong. The infinitive is last: Ich werde morgen gehen.

Conjugating the infinitive. Er wird kommt doubles up. Only werden carries the person; the other verb stays in its dictionary form.

Getting wirst and wird the wrong way round. du wirst, er wird. The t belongs to du, the way it does in du bist and du hast.

Reading every wird as future. Er wird zu Hause sein is often a guess about now, and Es wird kalt is about something happening now (it is getting cold). Check what sits at the end of the clause before translating.

What to do next

Learn the six forms of werden today; wirst and wird are the only surprises. Then practise the habit that matters more: when you want to talk about tomorrow, try the present tense with a time word first and reach for werden only when you are predicting, promising or guessing. The same werden comes back as the engine of the passive voice, and it is among the most common verbs in the German course, so the six forms will pay you back several times over.