How to learn Future Tense in German

Future Tense in German

While learning German, have you ever wondered how to talk about your upcoming trips or plans? To answer this, let us study the future tense in German today.

As you all know, tenses help us refer to the time when certain things happened or will happen. Future tense helps us to talk or refer to things that have not happened yet but will happen in the future.

Future Tense in German

In German, there are two forms of future tense.
Futur I: Sie wird die Prüfung bestehen. -> She will pass the test.
Futur II: Morgen wird sie die Prüfung bestanden haben. -> She will have passed the test tomorrow.

Before we begin, let us practice the conjugation of the verb “werden” in the present tense. Werden means will or shall in English.

ich	werde
du	wirst
er/sie/es	wird
wir	werden
ihr	werdet
sie/Sie	werden

Futur I in German

The Futur I tense in German is equivalent to the simple future tense in English.

The Futur I tense is formed with the conjugated present tense form of the verb “werden” in the second position and the infinitive of the main verb at the end of the sentence.

Example: Morgen werde ich um 7 Uhr aufstehen. -> I will get up at 7 o’clock tomorrow.

In the above example, since the subject is ich, the conjugated form werde takes the second position in the sentence. The infinitive or the base form of the main verb aufstehen is positioned at the end of the sentence.

Futur II in German

The Futur II tense in German is equivalent to the future perfect tense in English. In this tense, the action would already be complete in the future.

The Futur II tense is formed with the conjugated present tense form of the verb “werden” in the second position, the past participle or the Partizip II form of the second verb and the verbs haben or sein at the end of the sentence.

If you want to revise the Partizip II forms of verbs, check out our lesson German Perfect Tense with a List of 100+ Common Past Participles.

Example: Nächstes Jahr werde ich Bhutan besucht haben. -> I will have visited Bhutan next year.

In the above example, since the subject is ich, the conjugated form werde takes the second position in the sentence. The past participle or the Partizip II form i.e. besucht of the main verb besuchen is positioned at the end of the sentence followed by haben.

Examples for the Future Tense in German

Let us look at a few more example sentences of the German future tense. Observe the below sentences and let us know in the comments if you can identify the type of future tense used.

German	English
Morgen wird er um 8 Uhr aufstehen.	Tomorrow he will get up at 8 o’clock.
Um 6 Uhr werde ich Musik gehört haben.	At 6 o’clock I will have heard music.
Morgen wird der Tag nicht anders gewesen sein.	Tomorrow will not have been a different day.
Um 9:15 Uhr werde ich mit der Arbeit begonnen haben.	At 9:15 I will have started work.
Ich werde morgen in den Park gehen.	I will go to the park tomorrow.
Wir werden nächste Woche verreisen.	We will be traveling next week.