Futuro simple

Mañana lloverá.Tomorrow it will rain.

Spanish builds the simple future by adding endings directly onto the infinitive — the whole verb, unchanged — rather than swapping out a verb ending like the present tense does. The same set of endings works for -ar, -er and -ir verbs alike.

Quick shortcut: infinitive + -é, -ás, -á, -emos, -éis, -án.

The regular pattern

Mañana lloverá. (Tomorrow it will rain.) El año que viene viviré en Madrid. (Next year I'll live in Madrid.) ¿Qué comerás esta noche? (What will you eat tonight?)

Every ending except -emos carries a written accent. For a regular verb, the infinitive itself never changes — no dropped -ar/-er/-ir, no stem-changing pattern like the present tense has, just the bare infinitive plus the ending. A small set of common verbs is the exception, covered next.

Twelve common irregular stems

A small, fixed group of verbs uses a shortened or altered stem instead of the full infinitive — but the endings are exactly the same regular set:

Tendré veinte años en marzo. (I'll be twenty in March.) ¿Qué harás el sábado? (What will you do on Saturday?) Ella dirá la verdad. (She'll tell the truth.)

Any compound or derived verb formed from one of these twelve — deshacer (→ desharé) or mantener (→ mantendré) — keeps the same irregular stem as its base verb. Outside this list and its derivatives, every other verb is regular: endings on the plain infinitive.

futuro simple vs. ir a + infinitive

Spanish has two everyday ways to talk about the future, and they aren't identical:

Voy a llamar a mi madre ahora mismo. (I'm going to call my mother right now.) Llamaré a mi madre más tarde, cuando tenga tiempo. (I'll call my mother later, when I have time.)

Ir a + infinitive leans toward a plan already decided or something clearly about to happen; futuro simple reaches more naturally for a spontaneous decision, a prediction, a promise, or something further off or less certain. In everyday speech the two overlap a lot and either often works. Futuro simple also has a common extra job: a guess about the present, not just the future — ¿Qué hora será? ("I wonder what time it is" — a guess, not a real question). Ir a can express the same kind of guess too (¿Qué hora va a ser?), but futuro simple is the form that reaches for this job by default.

Common mistakes

• ❌ Yo teneré un perro. → ✅ Yo tendré un perro. (tener is one of the twelve irregular stems — the future stem is tendr-, not tene-.)
• ❌ Hablarán used with no written accent → ✅ Hablarán. (every ending except -emos needs its accent; dropping it is a spelling mistake, not just a style choice.)
• ❌ Yo hacaré la cena. → ✅ Yo haré la cena. (hacer's future stem is the fully irregular har-, not a ha- + -c- blend.)

Quick check

1. What's the yo form of vivir in futuro simple?
2. What's the futuro simple stem of poner?
3. What's wrong with this, and how would you fix it? Ella tenerá razón.
4. Voy a estudiar esta noche vs. Estudiaré esta noche — which one leans more toward an already-decided plan?

Key takeaways

• Futuro simple = infinitive + -é, -ás, -á, -emos, -éis, -án — the same endings for -ar, -er and -ir verbs, on the unchanged infinitive.
• Every ending except -emos carries a written accent.
• Twelve common verbs use a shortened or altered stem (tendr-, podr-, dir-, har-...) while keeping the same regular endings; a compound of one of them keeps its irregular stem too.
• Ir a + infinitive leans toward an already-decided plan or something imminent; futuro simple covers predictions, promises, spontaneous decisions, and guesses about the present (¿Qué hora será?).