Spanish Future Tense

There are two productive future strategies in Spanish, and you'll use both.

Strategy 1: ir a + infinitive

The conversational default. Ir conjugated in the present + a + the infinitive of the action.

• Voy a comer. (I'm going to eat.)
• Vas a salir esta noche. (You're going to go out tonight.)
• Vamos a viajar a México el año que viene. (We're going to travel to Mexico next year.)

This is what you'll hear most in everyday Spanish. Native speakers use it for near-future plans and casual predictions, just like English speakers reach for "I'm going to" over "I will".

Strategy 2: the inflectional future

A single set of endings attaches directly to the full infinitive - no chopping, no stem extraction. This is unusual for Spanish, where most tenses work off a chopped stem.

The same endings work for all three conjugation classes:

• hablar → hablaré, hablarás, hablará, hablaremos, hablaréis, hablarán
• comer → comeré, comerás, comerá, comeremos, comeréis, comerán
• vivir → viviré, vivirás, vivirá, viviremos, viviréis, vivirán

Note the written accents on every form except nosotros (comeremos is the only one without an accent).

Irregular future stems

Twelve verbs swap the infinitive for an irregular stem. The endings are identical to the regular set.

Compound verbs inherit the irregular stem: mantener → mantendré, deshacer → desharé, proponer → propondré.

When to use which

Two rough rules:

• Ir a + infinitive for near-future plans and conversational use. Voy a llamarte mañana. (I'm going to call you tomorrow.)
• Inflectional future for more remote predictions, promises and written / formal contexts. El presidente hablará a las ocho. (The president will speak at eight.) Te llamaré pronto. (I'll call you soon - a stronger promise than voy a llamarte.)

Native speakers mix the two freely in speech. For exam Spanish, either is grammatical; the inflectional form is the one teachers want to see you can produce.

The future of probability (advanced)

The inflectional future also serves a non-future use: probability or guessing about the present.

• ¿Qué hora será? (What time can it be? / I wonder what time it is.)
• Estará en casa. (He must be at home. / He's probably at home.)

This is a Higher-tier construction and gets full coverage on the intermediate Spanish grammar page. Foundation tier just needs to recognise it when reading.

Worked examples

• Mañana voy a estudiar todo el día. (Tomorrow I'm going to study all day.)
• ¿A qué hora vas a salir? (What time are you going to leave?)
• El año que viene viviré en Barcelona. (Next year I'll be living in Barcelona.)
• No tendremos tiempo. (We won't have time.)
• ¿Vendrás a la fiesta? (Will you come to the party?)
• Te diré la verdad. (I'll tell you the truth.)
• Sabrás la respuesta pronto. (You'll know the answer soon.)

Common mistakes English speakers make

Chopping the infinitive before adding the inflectional endings: comé instead of comeré, vivá instead of viviré. The Spanish future is the one tense where the full infinitive stays intact. Forgetting the written accents: comeré, not "comere". Trying to regularise the irregular stems: tendr- is right, not "tener-"; dir- is right, not "decir-". And using the inflectional future for casual immediate plans where ir a + infinitive sounds more natural.

See also

• The Spanish conditional page covers the would-tense, which uses the same stems with different endings.
• The intermediate Spanish grammar page covers the future of probability and the future perfect.