The future perfect tense is used to predict or suppose actions that are going to be completed by a point in time in the future. Have you ever been stressed with exams or deadlines and dreamed about the day you are finally done with everything? That’s when you use the future perfect! Para el martes, por fin habré acabado los exámenes meaning By Tuesday, I will have finished with exams. Let's dive into the future perfect!
How to form the future perfect in Spanish
The future perfect is formed with these two components:
First, you need the verb haber in the future form.
*vosotros is only used in Spain Person Haber in the future yohabrétúhabrásél/ella/ustedhabránosotroshabremos*vosotroshabréisellos/ellas/ustedeshabránIf you need to refresh your memory on how to form the future tense in Spanish and its uses, take a look at our post!
Second, we need the main verb in the past participle form (hablado meaning talked, comido meaning eaten, vivido meaning lived).
Take a look at this table we created if you need to go over how to form the past participle in Spanish.
Now let’s explore some examples with the future perfect:
As observed, we added para... meaning by because with the future perfect we express that you will have completed the action by a time in the future.
When do you use the future perfect tense in Spanish?
We use the future perfect in two contexts: to suppose the past of the future or to hypothesize about past events. Let’s get into it!
We can suppose the “past of the future”
First, we use the future perfect to make suppositions about the “past of the future.” That is, with this tense we can express what will have been completed (will be past) by a time in the future. That means that we place ourselves in a point in the future and we use it to express what will have been done by that time.
Let’s take a look at some examples. Imagine that Juan’s parents are out for the weekend and his parents give him a list of things to do by Sunday. Juan’s mother calls him and asks if he has already done all the house chores:
Did you notice the use of the future perfect? Juan places himself on Sunday (in the future) and he uses this tense to express that all his chores will have been done by this time in the future (the past of the future!)
We can express supposition about past events
Second, we can also use this tense to make suppositions about something that happened before a point in the present.
If we talk about something that happened in the past that we know about and we are sure it happened we say:
– Ha perdido su computadora. meaning –Why is Ana crying?
–She lost her computer.
However, if we want to make a supposition about this past event, we need to use the future perfect:
– Habrá perdido su computadora. meaning –Why is Ana crying?
–She might have lost her computer.
Notice that in English, the equivalent of these expressions is a past tense verb with expressions like “probably,” “I suppose,” or “I guess.”
To sum up
In this post we went over how to form the future perfect by using the future of haber + past participle. We also saw that the future perfect is used to talk about a completed event by a point in the future. And, we saw that we can use this tense to make a supposition about a past event.
Do you want to practice? Try out this exercise on the Spanish future perfect we created for you! Enjoy!
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