Future

How do we conjugate the Portuguese future tense?

The Portuguese future tense has the same conjugation pattern for almost all verbs, with three exceptions.

To conjugate it, we take the infinitive form of any verb and add the future tense endings to it. Here is an example with the verb ‘comer’:

• Eu comerei (I will eat)
• Tu comerás (you will eat)
• Você/ele/ela comerá (you/he/she will eat)
• Nós comeremos (we will eat)
• Vocês/eles/elas comerão (you/they will eat)

The exceptions are the verbs ‘fazer’ (to make), ‘dizer’ (to say) and ‘trazer’ (to bring).They have the same endings but the stem doesn’t correspond to the infinitive form. As an example of the stem used, here are the verbs conjugated for the first person singular:

‘Eu farei’ (I will do) | ‘eu direi’ (I will say) | ‘eu trarei’ (I will bring).

The alternative to the future conjugation

In everyday life, the future tense sounds very formal. To express a future action it’s more common to use the following structure: verb "ir" in the present + main verb in the infinitive.

Here is an example of the verb “fazer” (to make/to do) conjugated in this manner:

• Eu vou fazer (I’m going to make)
• Tu vais fazer (you're going to make)
• Você/ele/ela vai fazer (you/he/she is going to make)
• Nós vamos fazer (we are going to make)
• Vocês/eles/elas vão fazer (you/they are going to make)