Portuguese Future Tense: -ei, -á and the ir Shortcut
By Michael McGettrickUpdated 27 September 2026
The Portuguese future tense is two things at once. There is a proper future tense with its own endings, , I will speak, and there is the everyday shortcut, , I am going to speak, built from and an infinitive. Brazilians write the first and say the second. Learn to recognise both; produce the shortcut first.
The short answer
- Simple future: the whole infinitive plus -ei, -á, -emos, -ão.
. I will speak. - + infinitive: the present of
plus the infinitive.. I am going to speak. - Present tense: for anything already arranged, with a time word.
. I am working tomorrow.
Three tools, one job. The rest of this page is about which one a Brazilian actually reaches for, and why the answer is rarely the one the textbook leads with.
The simple future: the whole infinitive plus an ending
Every other tense in the verb conjugation charts starts by chopping the -ar, -er or -ir off the infinitive. The future does not. It keeps the infinitive whole and bolts the ending on the end, which is why it is sometimes the first tense a learner gets right without trying.
| person | -ar: | -er: | -ir: |
|---|---|---|---|
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
Read down any column and the endings are identical: -ei, -á, -emos, -ão. There is no separate set for -er or -ir verbs, so this is one row of four endings to learn, not three. (The tu form, , is the fifth, and you will need it for Portugal and for the parts of Brazil that still use tu.)
The endings are not arbitrary, either. They are the present tense of the old verb , to have, fused onto the infinitive centuries ago: falar hei, I have to speak, wore down into . You do not need that fact to use the tense, but it explains why the endings look like , há, hemos and with the h knocked off.
A few everyday sentences:
. - I will speak to him later.. - You will have time tomorrow.. - We will be at home.. - She will be happy.no. - They will come back next year.
Notice , and . The verbs that are a nightmare in the present and the past, , and , are perfectly regular here. So is : , I will go.
Only three irregular verbs
This is the best news in Portuguese verb grammar. In the simple future, exactly three verbs misbehave, and they misbehave the same way: they drop the -ze- from the middle of the infinitive and then take the normal endings.
| verb | stem | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| fazer, to do | far- | | | | |
| dizer, to say | dir- | | | | |
| trazer, to bring | trar- | | | | |
That is the whole list, apart from compounds of the same three, like desfazer. Spanish has around a dozen irregular future stems; French has more. Portuguese has three, and they share one rule. If you remember "fazer, dizer, trazer lose the ze", you are done.
The shortcut Brazilians actually use: ir + infinitive
Now the honest part. In ordinary Brazilian conversation, the simple future above is uncommon. What people say instead is the present tense of ir followed by an infinitive, exactly like the English going to:
| person | | + infinitive |
|---|---|---|
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
. - I am going to call tomorrow.. - She is going to arrive late.. - We will see.. - You are going to like it.. - I am going to help you.
Unlike English, where going to and will carry slightly different shades, Brazilian Portuguese uses + infinitive for nearly everything: plans, predictions, offers, the lot. is the national shrug; exists, but over coffee it sounds weighty.
The only thing you need to learn here is the present of , which you already know if you have done the irregular verbs. Four forms, and every infinitive in the course becomes a future.
Negatives and pronouns in the ir future
Two small placement rules. The first is what English word order would suggest: goes in front of , not in front of the infinitive:
. - I am not going to say anything.. - She is not going to come back today.
An object pronoun, in Brazilian speech, sits between the two verbs, right in front of the infinitive it belongs to:
. - I am going to call you tomorrow.. - We are going to help you.
That middle slot is where Brazilians put the pronoun almost every time, whatever a grammar written in Lisbon says. It is one more reason the future is the easy one: nothing inside a verb has to move.
What about going to go?
Strictly, I am going to go would be , and you will hear it all over Brazil. It is not an error, but some careful speakers and editors avoid it, because the present already does the job: already means I am going home tomorrow. Say on its own and nobody will blink.
When the present tense is enough
For anything fixed or arranged, Portuguese, like English, simply uses the present with a time word:
. - I am working tomorrow.Oé. - Dinner is tomorrow.à. - He arrives tonight.
If a time word is already in the sentence, the present is often the most natural choice of all.
Time words that go with any future
Whichever future you use, these are the words that pin it to a moment, and they are all in the course:
| Portuguese | English |
|---|---|
| tomorrow |
| later, afterwards |
| later on |
| soon, shortly |
| next week |
| next year |
no | next year (neater) |
um | one day, some day |
and are literally the week that comes and the year that comes, and they are more common in speech than . Até , until tomorrow, is how Brazilians say see you tomorrow.
So when does anyone use the simple future?
It is not dead. It is formal, written and final. You will meet it:
- In writing: news, contracts, instructions, emails to people you do not know.
- In promises and solemn statements:
. - I will never say anything. The simple future sounds more committed than - In speeches and on the news:
O. - The president will speak today. - In guesses about the present, the so-called future of probability:
? - Where can he be?
That last use has an everyday cousin, heard constantly in Brazil, that is worth knowing now. at the start of a question turns it into I wonder:
? - I wonder if he is coming.? - Do you think she is at home?
This one is not formal at all. You will hear constantly, and it is one of the cheapest ways to sound like you learned Portuguese from people rather than tables.
A note on pronouns in the future
In very formal European Portuguese, an object pronoun can sit in the middle of a future verb: falar-lhe-ei, I will speak to him. It is called mesoclisis, it looks like a typo, and Brazilians essentially never say it. They say and move on. Recognise it in old books; do not produce it.
Mistakes English speakers make
1. Saying in conversation. It is correct, and it sounds like a news anchor. In speech, default to + infinitive and save the simple future for writing and promises.
2. Using the future after . English says when I arrive, with a present tense. Portuguese uses neither the present nor the future here but the future subjunctive: , not . The same goes for : , if you can. The Portuguese subjunctive covers this properly; for now, just avoid the future after .
3. Translating will you requests with the future. Will you help me? is not a question about the future; it is a request. Portuguese asks with : me ? Asking ? sounds like you are demanding a prediction.
4. Losing the accent. (he will speak), falara (he had spoken, a literary past) and falaria (he would speak) are three different tenses separated by a stressed syllable and one letter. The accent on the future is not decoration; it tells you where the stress falls and which tense you are reading.
What to do next
Get the four forms of into your mouth until + infinitive is automatic, because that is the future you will actually speak. Then learn the simple future's endings as reading knowledge: -ei, -á, -emos, -ão, and the three verbs that drop -ze-. After that, the natural next step is the subjunctive, because the moment you start talking about the future you will want to say when and if, and Portuguese uses the subjunctive for both.
The verbs used on this page, , , , , , are all in the first chapters of the Portuguese course, which is where to drill them.