Das Futur (Futur I and Futur II)

German has a future tense, but it spends most of its time avoiding it. The standard way to talk about tomorrow in German is to use the present tense with a time word: Morgen fahre ich nach Berlin. Literally tomorrow drive I to Berlin. The verb is present, the meaning is future, and no native speaker would phrase it any other way for a routine plan.

The actual future tense, Futur I, is reserved for cases where the present plus an adverb cannot do the job: predictions without a fixed date, statements of intention with extra weight, and assumptions about how things probably are. There is also a Futur II for the future perfect and for confident guesses about the past. Neither is the workhorse a learner of French or English might expect.

The most important thing first

The single fact that will save you most of the work in this entry is this: in spoken German, the present tense is the future tense. If the sentence contains a time word that points forward, the verb stays in the present.

Morgen fahre ich nach Berlin. Tomorrow I am going to Berlin.

Nächste Woche fängt die Schule wieder an. School starts again next week.

In zwei Stunden bin ich zu Hause. I will be home in two hours.

Gleich rufe ich dich an. I will call you in a moment.

The list of forward-pointing time words is short: morgen, übermorgen, nächste Woche, nächsten Monat, nächstes Jahr, bald, gleich, demnächst, in zwei Stunden, in drei Tagen. With any of these in the clause, the present carries the future meaning. Everything else in this entry is what you do when the present-plus-adverb solution does not fit.

Futur I: form

Futur I is built from two pieces, and the pieces sit at opposite ends of the clause, the same way they do in perfekt.

auxiliary werden (conjugated, in second position) + infinitive (at the end of the clause)

The auxiliary is werden, the same verb that doubles as the future-passive marker and as the verb meaning to become. Conjugated in the present tense, it reads like this:

The conjugation has one quirk worth flagging: du wirst and er wird both lose the e of the stem and end in t and d respectively. Er wirdt is wrong. Du wirst, er wird. Memorise the pair as a unit.

The infinitive then waits at the end of the clause:

Ich werde morgen nach Berlin fahren. I will go to Berlin tomorrow.

Wir werden im Sommer ein Haus kaufen. We will buy a house in the summer.

Sie wird dir alles erklären. She will explain everything to you.

In all three sentences, werden sits in the second position and the infinitive closes the clause. Whatever you put in the middle field is everything that is not the verbal frame.

Futur II: form

Futur II is the future perfect, and it is built by stacking the perfect-tense participle inside the Futur I frame.

werden (conjugated, V2) + past participle + haben or sein (infinitive, at the very end)

The participle is the same one you would use in perfekt. The auxiliary at the end is haben or sein by the same rules as in perfekt: transitive verbs and most intransitives take haben, verbs of motion or change of state take sein.

Bis Montag werde ich den Brief geschrieben haben. By Monday I will have written the letter.

In zwei Stunden werden wir in Hamburg angekommen sein. In two hours we will have arrived in Hamburg.

Bis Weihnachten wird er das Buch fertig gelesen haben. By Christmas he will have finished reading the book.

The chain at the end of the clause is the load-bearing part. The stack is heavy, and most German speakers prefer to rephrase a sentence rather than produce a Futur II in casual conversation.

Word order in Futur I

The verbal frame, the Satzklammer, is the rule of all German tenses. Werden takes the second position of the clause. The infinitive closes the clause. Everything else hangs in the middle.

The position-one slot is whatever you want to emphasise. The auxiliary still comes second, and the infinitive still closes the clause.

In subordinate clauses introduced by dass, weil, wenn, als and the rest, both verbs go to the very end and the auxiliary comes after the infinitive: …weil ich morgen nach Berlin fahren werde. The bracket reverses, but the pieces are the same.

When a modal joins the construction, the order at the end is main-verb infinitive followed by modal infinitive followed by werden. Werden is still in the second position, the modal is still last in its little stack, and the main verb is sandwiched between them.

Ich werde das Buch lesen müssen. I will have to read the book.

Du wirst zu Hause bleiben können. You will be able to stay home.

The pattern is werden + Hauptverb-Infinitiv + Modal-Infinitiv. Two infinitives at the end, in that order. See modalverben for the modals themselves.

When to use Futur I

1. Predictions without a fixed time word

When you are predicting something for the future and there is no adverb pinning it to a moment, the present tense is not enough. The future tense steps in.

Es wird regnen. It will rain.

Du wirst es bereuen. You will regret it.

Sie wird Ärztin. She is going to be a doctor. (often expressed with present too: sie wird Ärztin uses werden both as auxiliary and as full verb)

2. Intention with extra weight

The future tense gives a promise or a stated intention more ceremony than the present can carry. It is the difference between I will do it and I’m doing it.

Ich werde dir helfen. I will help you.

Wir werden niemals aufgeben. We will never give up.

The same content in the present tense (ich helfe dir, wir geben niemals auf) sounds lighter and more immediate. The werden version carries the weight of a vow.

3. Subjective probability about the present

This is the use that surprises learners. Futur I is also the standard way to express probably about something happening right now. The German future tense doubles as the present-tense modal of assumption.

Er wird wohl zu Hause sein. He is probably at home.

Sie wird das schon wissen. She probably knows that.

Das wird ein Missverständnis sein. That must be a misunderstanding.

The trigger word wohl (or sicher, wahrscheinlich, bestimmt, schon) is usually present and disambiguates the meaning. Without one of these adverbs, the same sentence can read as a future prediction.

When to use Futur II

1. Future perfect

The textbook use. An action that will be complete by some future point.

Bis nächstes Jahr werde ich mein Studium abgeschlossen haben. By next year I will have finished my studies.

Bevor du kommst, werde ich gegessen haben. Before you come, I will have eaten.

In practice, this construction is rare in spoken German. The simpler bis nächstes Jahr habe ich mein Studium abgeschlossen (perfect tense plus a deadline word) does the same job and sounds less heavy.

2. Strong assumption about a past event

This is the more common use of Futur II in actual speech. It expresses a confident guess about something that has already happened.

Er wird das gemacht haben. He must have done that.

Sie wird wohl zu Hause gewesen sein. She must have been at home.

Das wird er nicht gewollt haben. He probably did not want that.

Same logic as the subjective use of Futur I: the future-tense form expresses inference, not actual time. Futur I infers about the present, Futur II infers about the past.

How writers use it

Goethe’s Faust is a long meditation on a single conditional future. Faust’s bargain with Mephistopheles is staked on a Futur I verb: werd ich zum Augenblicke sagen, verweile doch. The whole architecture of the play, all twelve thousand lines, is the question of whether that future verb will ever be activated. Goethe places the construction at the centre of the second study-room scene and lets the entire drama push toward and away from it.

In Werther, Goethe uses Futur I differently. Werther reaches for the future tense whenever his emotional pitch is high: ich werde sie wiedersehen, alles wird gut sein, du wirst sehen. A calmer correspondent would use the present tense with a time word. The werden verbs in his letters are usually a tell that the speaker is not going to get what he is predicting.

Kafka uses werden for the voice of the institution. In Der Process, the warders, magistrates, and lawyers speak in Futur I, and the future they describe is one the listener has no influence over. Der Untersuchungsrichter wird Sie rufen lassen. The grammar makes the bureaucracy sound prophetic.

Compare to French. The futur simple (see futur-simple) is a synthetic, single-word tense: je ferai, tu seras, nous viendrons. German Futur I is analytic, two pieces, with the bracket structure of every other compound tense. The German construction is heavier on the page and on the ear, which is one of the reasons German speakers reach for the present tense instead.

What you don’t need to do

You don’t need to use Futur I most of the time. If the time word is in the sentence, the present tense is the right answer, and werden makes the sentence sound formal or laboured. Morgen werde ich nach Berlin fahren is grammatical, but morgen fahre ich nach Berlin is what you actually hear.

You don’t need Futur II in casual speech. The future perfect rarely comes up, and when it does, the perfect-tense workaround (bis Montag habe ich den Brief geschrieben) is usually preferred. Save Futur II for the inference use (er wird das gemacht haben), which has no equally compact substitute.

You don’t need to translate every English will with werden. English will maps onto German present, future, or modal-of-assumption depending on the sentence. I will see you tomorrow is ich sehe dich morgen. Read the meaning, not the word.

Common confusions

• Werden has three jobs. It is the future auxiliary (ich werde fahren), the passive auxiliary (ich werde gefragt), and a full verb meaning to become (ich werde Lehrer). An infinitive at the end means future, a participle at the end means passive, a noun or adjective with no verb at the end means to become.
• Ignoring the present-as-future rule. Beginners over-produce werden because they translate will word for word. Strip the werden out whenever there is a forward-pointing time word.
• Forgetting that du wirst and er wird lose the e. Du werdest and er werdt are not forms of this verb. Du wirst, er wird.
• Mixing up Futur II with Plusquamperfekt. Plusquamperfekt is hatte/war + Partizip and refers to a past-before-past. Futur II is werde + Partizip + haben/sein and refers to a future perfect or a strong guess about the past.
• Treating werden as a modal. It is not. Modals have their own conjugation pattern and do not form the future.
• Using Futur I after wenn or sobald. German uses the present tense after these conjunctions when the meaning is future. Wenn du kommst, sehen wir uns (when you come, we will see each other).

Where you’ll meet it in the library

Future tense is rarer in narrative prose than in dialogue or in letters. The richest German encounters with Futur I are in plays, epistolary novels, and passages of formal speech.

• Faust (B2). Goethe’s verse drama is built around a single conditional Futur I verb. The bargain scene is the most famous use of the future tense in the German literary tradition.
• Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (B2). The letter form invites the future tense whenever the writer is making a promise. Werther’s letters are full of werde sehen, werde gehen, wird sein.
• Der Process (A2+). Kafka uses Futur I for institutional pronouncement. Court officials speak in the future tense, and their predictions function as veiled commands.
• Das Schloss (A2+). The same Kafka pattern, applied to the bureaucracy of the castle. Officials speak in werden constructions; K. answers in present tense.
• Grimms Märchen (A1). Dialogue contains Futur I in oaths, prophecies, and curses. Useful short doses.
• Frankenstein (B2). The German adaptation preserves the letter-frame opening. Robert Walton writes to his sister in werde constructions, predicting a voyage that will not go the way he hopes.