Poder Conjugation in Portuguese: Every Tense, Plus the pode / pôde Trap

Portuguese poder, not Spanish poder

Quick check before you scroll. This page teaches the Portuguese verb poder, with Brazilian Portuguese as the default and European Portuguese flagged where it differs. Spanish has a verb spelled identically and search results mix the two constantly, but the forms are not the same. Every poder conjugation table below is Portuguese.

Spanish poder changes its stem in the present: puedo, puedes, puede. If you came for those -ue- forms, you want a Spanish page. Portuguese keeps a plain o through the present, except in the eu form, where the d doubles into an s: posso. The two languages do share a past stem, pud-, which is why Spanish pudo and Portuguese pôde look like cousins.

How do you conjugate poder in the present tense?

The present is the poder conjugation you'll reach for most. It does three jobs at once: ability (I can swim), permission (can I sit here?), and possibility (that can happen).

One note on the pronunciation hints, because this verb turns on a single vowel. PAW is the open o of English "law." POH is the closed o of English "go." Portuguese uses both, and keeping them apart pays off enormously here.

Two rows need context. The tu row is thoroughly alive in Portugal, where tu podes is what you say to a friend. Brazil hands that job to você pode, and where tu does survive (Rio Grande do Sul, much of the Northeast, Rio), speakers often pair it with the você form and say tu pode. No grammar book sanctions that; everyone hears it.

The vós row is a museum piece in both countries, turning up in older Bible translations and formal oratory. Brazilians also say a gente pode for "we can," since a gente takes the ele ending. If verb tables are new to you, our Portuguese verbs guide sets up the -ar, -er, and -ir patterns first.

Poder preterite: pude, pôde, pudemos, puderam

The second poder conjugation worth memorizing is the pretérito perfeito, which reports one specific, finished occasion. "I couldn't make it yesterday" lives here. The stem swaps from pod- to pud- across every person, and one form picks up a hat.

Read the nós row twice. Podemos with an o means "we can"; pudemos with a u means "we could." One letter apart, and no accent warns you. Spanish is no help here, since it keeps podemos for the present and moves to pudimos for the past.

That pud- stem isn't a one-off. It carries into the imperfect subjunctive (pudesse) and the future subjunctive (puder) below, so learning it once pays for three tables.

Pode vs pôde: the accent that moves the tense

One pair inside the poder conjugation causes more written errors than the rest of the verb combined. Pode with no accent is the present: he can, she can, you can. Pôde with a circumflex is the preterite: he could, on one particular occasion. Same verb, same person, one small hat between them.

That hat isn't decorative. It marks a real change in the vowel, from the open o of "law" (/ˈpɔdʒi/) to the closed o of "go" (/ˈpodʒi/). Brazilians hear the difference the instant you say it, which is why the written accent survived.

And it nearly didn't. The 1990 Orthographic Agreement deleted most of Portuguese's differential accents, then kept this one on purpose. Base IX of the agreement makes the circumflex obligatory on pôde precisely because it separates the preterite from the matching present form.

Read the accent as a time machine: the hat points backwards, into the past. So every time you write pode, ask yourself whether you mean now or then. The same agreement kept one matching accent next door, on pôr (to put), so the verb stays clear of the preposition por (by, for).

Pretérito imperfeito: podia, the softer past

Portuguese runs two simple past tenses, and the poder conjugation uses both constantly. Where pude reports one closed event, podia describes an ongoing state: what you were allowed to do, what used to be possible.

The stem stays pod- here and the endings are regular. No vowel swap, no accent surprises.

Choosing between the two pasts comes down to one question: a moment, or a situation? Não pude ir means I had one chance and missed it. Não podia ir means going wasn't an option back then. Brazilians also use podia as a gentle suggestion, the way English uses "could": você podia ligar para ela (you could call her).

Poder conjugation in the future and the conditional

Good news after the preterite: the stem calms down. Both tenses build straight off the infinitive poder and take the endings every Portuguese verb uses.

Futuro do presente: poderei

In everyday Brazilian speech this whole table gets replaced by vou poder: amanhã eu vou poder responder. Recognize poderei on the page, say vou poder out loud.

Futuro do pretérito: poderia, the polite one

Poderia is your politeness dial. Pode me passar o sal? is normal among friends; poderia me passar o sal? is what you say to a stranger or a waiter. Same request, softer landing.

Poder subjunctive: possa, pudesse, and puder

The subjunctive half of the poder conjugation runs three tenses on two stems. The present subjunctive uses poss-, the double s from posso. The other two return to pud-.

Present subjunctive: possa

Triggered by wanting, hoping, doubting, and by talvez (maybe).

Imperfect subjunctive: pudesse

The "if I could" tense, and half of most conditional sentences.

Future subjunctive: puder

A tense Spanish quietly retired and Portuguese kept in daily use. After se (if) and quando (when) pointing at the future, Portuguese requires it.

Se puder and quando puder are two of the most useful chunks in spoken Portuguese. Memorize them as fixed phrases and let the grammar catch up.

The personal infinitive: a poder conjugation Spanish doesn't have

Portuguese can conjugate an infinitive. Spanish, French, and Italian cannot. The personal infinitive adds person endings to the plain infinitive, so the sentence spells out who it belongs to.

Now put that table beside the future subjunctive above. The endings are identical. Only the stem differs: personal infinitive keeps pod-, future subjunctive takes pud-. So para podermos ir (so that we can go) and se pudermos ir (if we can go) sit one vowel apart.

For most Portuguese verbs those two tables hold literally the same words, which is why nobody warns you they're separate tenses. Poder is one of the few that pulls them apart, which makes it the ideal verb for seeing the difference.

Asking, allowing, forbidding: poder in real conversation

Three jobs cover nearly everything poder does.

Asking permission. Start with posso. It's the fastest polite question in Portuguese and it works on its own.

Making a request. Pode among friends, poderia for everyone else.

Portugal attaches the pronoun to the verb: Pode ajudar-me? where Brazil says Pode me ajudar? Both are correct, and which one you produce quietly announces who taught you.

Saying no. Não pode is how Portuguese forbids things, and it lands harder than English "you can't."

That bare aqui não pode earns its own mention. Brazilians drop the verb after pode constantly, so a security guard saying não pode with a hand gesture has produced a complete sentence.

Two idioms to close on. Pode crer (literally "you can believe it") means "for sure," and Brazilians answer with it all day. Pode pá is the same idea in slang. As a noun, o poder means "power" (o poder do governo), with no conjugation at all. Priberam lists poder as irregular with a regular participle (podido), and Wiktionary carries the full paradigm. For the next irregular, querer follows this road map, comer shows what a regular -er verb looks like, and every free lesson lives on the Portuguese hub.