The future tense in French is very simple. It forms on the infinitive of the verb and uses a set of endings that closely resemble those of the present tense of avoir: -ai, -as, -a, -ons, -ez, -ont. Can you remember that we only drop the av- of avons and avez to find the future endings?

All regular verbs form the future tense by adding these endings to the infinitive.

For -er verbs and -ir verbs this rule will always work. For -re verbs, we need to drop only the -e of the ending, so that every future form ends: -rai, -ras, -ra, -rons, -rez, -ront. Here are some examples:

Learn par cœur (by heart) any verbs with irregular future stems. These verbs will use the same irregular stem to form their conditional, too, but the endings will be different (the endings for the conditional will be the same endings as for the imperfect: -ais, -ais, -ait, -ions, -iez, -aient).

Both ways of expressing actions yet to come are easy to form and to use:

1. Le futur proche
a device that uses the present tense of the verb aller + the infinitive of the verb.

2. Le futur
a verb tense formed by using the infinitive + the endings of avoir: Literally, what to do (infinitive) you have (avoir), or what you have to do.