What to practise, and in what order
Most conjugation practice fails for one reason: it treats all verbs as equally important. They are not. The seven most common Spanish verbs - ser, estar, haber, tener, hacer, poder and decir - are all irregular, and between them they carry a startling share of everyday speech. Drill those seven until the forms are reflexes and you have bought more fluency than a hundred tidy regular verbs would give you. The full ranking, with what each verb is actually for, is in our top 100 Spanish verbs guide.
Alongside the irregulars, learn the three regular paradigms once each: -ar verbs, -er verbs and -ir verbs. Every regular verb in the language is one of those three tables wearing a different stem, and the stem-changing verbs are the same tables with one predictable vowel swap.
Tenses have an order too. Present first, and properly. Then preterite and imperfect together, because choosing between them is the actual Spanish past tense. Then future and conditional, which share a stem and are nearly free. Then commands and the subjunctives. Practising the imperfect subjunctive before the present indicative is automatic is how learners end up knowing about Spanish rather than speaking it.
The conjugation game: Conjugation Sprint
The fastest conjugation practice on this site is the Conjugation Sprint, a 60-second game. One verb at a time, one person, one tense, four forms on the screen - tap the right one and the next question is already there. A wrong answer flashes the correct form and resets your streak, which is exactly the feedback loop a paper exercise cannot give you.
The clock is the point. Conversation does not wait while you recite "hablo, hablas, habla" from the top of the table to find the form you need; the Sprint trains direct access to each cell. Sixty seconds also means there is no excuse not to play three rounds with your coffee.
By default the game drills the present tense. It also takes a tense list in the link, so you can point it at whatever you are working on:
- Preterite only
- Preterite and imperfect mixed
- Present subjunctive only
- Every tense at once - all eight drillable tenses in one merciless round, for learners who want conjugation practice across all tenses rather than one at a time.
The Sprint is part of Kilo Lingo Plus; the free week that comes with a new account includes it and the rest of the games arcade.
Free practice on every verb page
Every verb page carries a practice box beneath its chart that asks you for the forms rather than showing you them - type the answer, get marked, move on. No account needed, no clock if you do not want one. Open hablar, ser or any of the other 799 and scroll past the table.
There is also Spanish Just Drill and the word drill for the verbs' meanings, which is a different job: knowing what "conseguir" means and producing "consiguieron" on demand are separate skills, and both need reps.
The reference: charts for 799 verbs, every tense
The Spanish verb conjugation hub lists the 799 most common Spanish verbs, each linking to a full chart: present, preterite, imperfect, future, conditional, subjunctive and imperative, every person, with pronunciation and example sentences. The irregulars are flagged, because they are the ones worth opening first.
The common search here is for an all-tenses chart PDF. We do not ship one file with 799 verbs in it, and on reflection that is the right call: a 799-verb PDF is a doorstop, not a study aid. What we do have is each verb's full chart on a page that prints cleanly from the browser, and a per-verb printable practice sheet, covered below.
Practice by tense
Each tense has a written guide with interactive exercises on the page, a printable worksheet set behind the guide's downloads section, and, where noted, a Sprint link that drills that tense alone:
- Present: the -ar, -er and -ir guides, plus the Sprint's default round. Spanish present tense conjugation practice starts and mostly stays here.
- Preterite: the preterite guide, then preterite-only Sprint rounds.
- Imperfect: the imperfect guide, and once both pasts exist, preterite vs imperfect is the page that matters.
- Future: the future tense guide and future-only rounds.
- Conditional: the conditional guide and conditional rounds.
- Commands: the imperative guide and command rounds.
- Present subjunctive: the forms, then subjunctive-only rounds.
- Imperfect subjunctive: the forms - both the -ra and -se paradigms, and our drills accept either, because both are correct Spanish - then imperfect subjunctive rounds.
Printable conjugation worksheets and PDFs
For practice on paper, which is still the best format for a classroom and still a good one for a desk:
- Per-verb conjugation worksheets. Every one of the 799 verb pages has a printable practice sheet in its downloads section - a blank present-tense table to fill in for that verb, with the answer key at the foot so the sheet works as practice first and reference after. Saved from the browser it is a clean A4 PDF. Start with hablar or ser.
- Grammar worksheet sets. Every tense guide above ships a printable worksheet set generated from its exercises, answer key included, in the downloads section of the page - the preterite guide's set is a good example. The present-tense conjugation guides add a dedicated verb conjugation drill sheet on top.
- The full library. Every printable in the Spanish course, mapped chapter by chapter, lives on the Spanish teaching resources page.
Downloading needs a free account: the first week includes unlimited downloads, and after that the printables are part of Kilo Lingo Plus. Reading the guides, the charts and the exercises stays free.
If worksheets are the thing you came for, the wider collection - vocabulary, grammar and story sheets, not just conjugation - is covered in free printable Spanish worksheets for beginners. Learning French as well? The French verb conjugation practice guide is this page's twin.