It’s fairly fácil (easy) once you understand how to form the tense, so let’s have a look together!
Knowing how to talk about el futuro (the future) in any language is obviously very important. Without it, you won’t be able to discuss your future plans for studying Spanish, or tell anyone about all the great adventures you’ve got planned! When speaking Spanish, we need to learn the main ways of forming sentences about the future.
El futuro simple
| Ver Type | Endings | English Pronoun |
| -AR Hablar Hablar Hablar Hablar Hablar Hablar |
– é ás á emos éis án |
– I You He, she, you (polite), it We You plural They, you (plural polite) |
| -ER Vender Vender Vender Vender Vender Vender |
– é ás á emos éis án |
– I You He, she, you (polite), it We You plural They, you (plural polite) |
| -IR Vivir Vivir Vivir Vivir Vivir Vivir |
– é ás á emos éis án |
– I You He, she, you (polite), it We You plural They, you (plural polite) |
This is the main way of expressing future ideas in Spanish when we want to speak about the future in general terms, or to say what is going to happen in the future without specifying an exact time. You probably remember from some of our other blogs on the Hablamos site that there are three main types of verbs in Spanish – -ar, -er and –ir endings. To form the futuro simple, we take el infinitive (the infinitive) of the verb and add the following endings directly onto it.
That’s it! So now you can start making sentences in the future in Spanish like these examples below:
Hablaremos del tema más tarde porque ahora no es el momento – We’ll talk about that topic later because now isn’t the time
Viviré mucho tiempo en Madrid – I will live in Madrid for a long time
Venderá el coche en algún momento – He/She will sell the car at some point
But, like with all tenses when learning Spanish, or any other language, there are exceptions. A lot of the most useful verbs are actually irregular in the futuro simple. Here are the most common ones:
| IRREGULAR VERB STEMS (ENDINGS ARE SAME AS IN PREVIOUS TABLE) | |
| dir (decir) To say har (hacer) To do/make podr (poder) To be able to pondr (poner) To put querr (querer) To want sabr (saber) To know |
saldr (salir) To leave/go out tendr (tener) To have vendr (venir) To come habr (haber) To have/Auxiliary verb cabr (caber) To fit valdr (valer) To be worth |
With the irregular verbs, you still put on the same endings as with regular ones. For example:
Mañana vendrá mi hermana e iremos al cine – My sister is coming tomorrow and we’re going to the cinema
Tendrán mucho curro al abrir la nueva tienda – They’ll have a lot of work when the new shop opens
That’s all there is to it! Now you can explain yourself and your future plans in Spanish with ease! There’s also another future form which we need to have a little look at too, so let’s continue.
Ir + a + infinitivo
This construction is going to allow you to talk about things in the future that are happening almost immediately, or which are going to happen fairly soon. It’s a bit like “Going to” in English to give you an idea of a near equivalent. Here’s a table to show you the construction and a few examples.
| IR | + A | + INFINITIVE | TO GO | + INFINITIVE |
| Voy | a | hablar | I am going | to speak |
| Vas | a | vender | You are going | to sell |
| Va | a | vivir | He/she is going | to live |
| Vamos | a | nadar | We are going | to swim |
| Vais | a | ver | You (pl) are going | to see |
| Van | a | llegar | They are going | to arrive |
Seriously, it really is that easy! You simply replace the verbo (verb) in the infinitive column with whichever other one you want to say. No exceptions, no strange spelling changes, nada de nada (nothing at all).
The only thing left to do now is to learn the endings, memorise the exceptions and start speaking Spanish to make sure you get lots of practice in talking about the future. Here at Hablamos we can give you lots of opportunities to practise this, and other, grammar points in our fun, interactive presential and online classes.
