Spanish Future Tense: The Easy Guide (Conjugation + Ir + That Weird Probability Thing)

You're learning Spanish now, and you need to talk about the future. Makes sense—that's like 90% of everyday conversation. "I'll call you later." "We're going to the movies tomorrow." "You'll understand this grammar eventually."

Here's the thing about the Spanish future tense: it's actually one of the easiest verb tenses to learn. No joke. Unlike most Spanish verb conjugations that make you drop endings and remember different patterns for -ar, -er, and -ir verbs, the future tense in Spanish just... doesn't do that.

But there's a catch. Spanish has two ways to express future actions, and picking the wrong one makes you sound weird. Also, the future tense does this thing where it expresses probability in the present, which confuses the hell out of English speakers.

Let's break it down.

Two Ways to Talk About the Future in Spanish

The Immediate Future: Ir + a + Infinitive

This is the "going to" construction. It's what you probably learned first, and honestly, it's what you'll use most in casual conversation.

The formula is dead simple:

Examples:

This form is for immediate future actions, stuff you've already planned, or future plans that feel pretty certain. If you're telling your friend you'll meet them for coffee in an hour, use this.

The Simple Future Tense

This is the formal conjugated future—the futuro simple. Use the future tense to express:

Here's where Spanish gets ridiculously easy: all three verb types (-ar, -er, -ir) use the exact same future tense endings, and you just add the endings to the full infinitive form. You don't drop anything. You don't need three different charts. Just take the entire infinitive and add the correct ending:

Look at some examples with regular verbs:

To form the simple future tense, you literally just add the endings to the infinitive of the verb. That's it. No stem changes for regular verbs in the future tense.

The difference between the two? If you're using "ir + a + infinitive," you're expressing the immediate future or something planned. If you're using the simple future, it sounds more distant, more formal, or more speculative.

Compare these:

The first one is immediate. The second sounds more distant or uncertain. This is how Spanish expresses future actions with different levels of certainty.

Simple Future Conjugation: The 12 Irregular Verbs

Okay, so the future tense has some irregular verbs. But here's the good news: they still use the same future tense endings as regular verbs. Only the irregular stem changes.

There are only 12 basic irregular verbs in the future tense, and they fall into three patterns. These irregular verbs in the future don't use their full infinitive—instead, they have modified stems.

Pattern 1: Drop the vowel These five Spanish verbs drop the e or i from the ending:

Pattern 2: Replace the vowel with -d- These five verbs swap the vowel for a d:

Pattern 3: Completely irregular stem Just memorize these two:

That's it. And if you see compound verbs like "proponer" or "deshacer," they follow the same pattern as their root verb.

Want a deeper dive into haber specifically? Check out our complete haber conjugation guide—it's one of those Spanish verbs that shows up everywhere, especially when you're forming the future perfect tense.

The Future Tense Is Used for Probability (The Weird Thing)

Here's where the Spanish future tense gets interesting. You can use the future tense to express probability or speculation about the present.

In English, you'd say "He's probably at home" or "It must be 3 o'clock." In Spanish, you just use future tense conjugation:

This trips up English speakers because we're using future conjugation to talk about right now. But Spanish does this all the time. The future tense is used to make predictions and express uncertainty—not just about future actions, but about the present too. Context tells you whether it's actually referring to future events or just speculation about now.

Once you get used to it, it's actually pretty useful. You can express future possibilities without adding extra words like "probablemente."

Reflexive Verbs in the Future Tense

Quick note: reflexive verbs work the same way in the future. You conjugate the verb normally and keep the reflexive pronoun:

The reflexive verbs follow the same future forms as any other verb—you just don't forget the reflexive pronoun.

The Conditional Tense (Close Relative)

While we're here, the conditional tense deserves a mention. It's formed by adding different endings to the infinitive, but it uses the exact same irregular stems as the future tense.

So if "tener" becomes "tendr-" in the future (tendré), it's also "tendr-" in the conditional (tendría). If you learn the irregular verbs in the future, you've already learned them for the conditional tense too. Two for one.

Want more on the conditional? We have a full Spanish conditional tense guide that breaks down all the conjugations and uses.

How to Actually Practice This (And Learn About the Future Tense the Right Way)

Look, you can memorize conjugation charts all day, but you won't really internalize the Spanish future until you see it used naturally. A lot.

The best way to learn verb tenses? See them in context hundreds of times. Not in textbook exercises where you fill in blanks, but in actual Spanish content—shows, YouTube videos, articles, whatever you're into.

When you're watching Spanish content and you hear someone say "¿Dónde estará mi teléfono?" (Where could my phone be?), your brain starts connecting that future tense conjugation with the feeling of speculation. When you see "Mañana iré al supermercado" in a text message, you're learning that the simple future tense sounds more formal or distant than "Voy a ir."

You're not just learning how to conjugate—you're learning when native speakers actually use the future tense versus when they use present tense or "ir + a + infinitive" to talk about future plans.

This is literally what Migaku is built for. The browser extension lets you watch Spanish shows with instant word lookups—you click any word, see what it means, and add it to your spaced repetition deck if you want. No pausing to look stuff up in a dictionary. No losing the flow of the scene.

The mobile app syncs everything, so you can review those verb conjugations later when you're on the bus or whatever. And because you're learning them from real sentences—sentences you actually heard in context—they stick way better than memorizing "hablaré, hablarás, hablará" from a chart.

You see how native speakers actually express future actions. You learn which future forms sound natural in different situations. You absorb the tense endings without drilling them.

Want to get started with Spanish? Our beginner's guide walks you through the immersion approach from day one. And if you're curious whether this method actually works for learning Spanish, check out how one premed student learned Spanish fast using real content instead of grinding through textbooks.

There's a 10-day free trial if you want to see how learning from actual Spanish content compares to textbook exercises. The difference is pretty noticeable—especially when you're trying to internalize when to use each future tense naturally.