Ir Conjugation in Spanish: Every Tense, One Clear Chart

How do you conjugate ir in the present tense?

Here's the oddest table in Spanish. The verb is ir, and not one of these six forms contains an r. Say them as a chant and the hardest stretch of the ir conjugation is already behind you.

The Spanish v is pronounced like a soft English b, so voy genuinely rhymes with "boy." That's your first mini-win: you can already say it correctly.

Why doesn't anything look like "ir"?

Because ir isn't one verb. Spanish welded it together from three separate Latin verbs, a process linguists call suppletion. The v- forms (voy, vaya) come from Latin vādere, "to advance." The i- forms (ir, iba, iré) come from īre, "to go." And the fu- forms (fui, fuera) come from esse, the Latin verb for "to be," which explains a lot of what happens further down this page. You can follow the whole family tree on Wiktionary's ir entry.

So here's the memory hook for the entire verb. Every form of ir you will ever meet belongs to one of three sound families: the v- family (voy, vamos, vaya), the i- family (iba, iré, iría), and the fu- family (fui, fuera). When a mystery form turns up, the first sound tells you it's ir before you work out the tense.

One practical note: if you're learning Latin American Spanish, you can skip the vosotros row entirely. Ustedes van covers "you all are going" everywhere outside Spain.

Ir a + infinitive: talk about the future today

This is the most useful thing a beginner can take from this page. Put ir in the present tense, add a, then add any verb in its plain infinitive form, and you've built the future. No future tense required.

Conjugated ir + a + infinitive

The second verb never changes. Comer stays comer, venir stays venir, llover stays llover. You conjugate ir and nothing else, so six forms of the ir conjugation unlock every other verb you know in the future.

Spanish teachers call this el futuro próximo, the near future, and speakers reach for it constantly in conversation, exactly like English "I'm going to." Learn it now and you can postpone the real future tense for months.

Two upgrades that cost you nothing. Swap ir into the imperfect and you get "was going to": iba a llamarte (I was going to call you), íbamos a salir (we were going to go out). And vamos a + infinitive doubles as a suggestion, so vamos a empezar means both "we're going to start" and "let's start." Tone of voice decides which.

Ir conjugation in the past: preterite and imperfect

Spanish has two simple past tenses, and ir is irregular in both. Each one has a clear job, and between them they cover almost everything you'll want to say about where you went.

Ir preterite conjugation (fui)

The preterite is the finished-story past: one trip, one Tuesday, one closed chapter.

Neither fui nor fue takes a written accent, which trips up a lot of learners who expect one on the final vowel. And if these six forms look familiar from another verb, that's no coincidence. There's a whole section on it just below.

Ir imperfect conjugation (iba)

The imperfect is the background past: what used to happen, what things were like, habits with no clear end.

Only íbamos carries a written accent. The other five are bare.

Here's the consolation prize. Spanish has exactly three verbs with an irregular imperfect: ir (iba), ser (era), and ver (veía). Every other verb in the language, all thousands of them, takes predictable -aba or -ía endings with no surprises at all. Learn these three and the imperfect tense is finished forever.

Which past do you want? Fui a París is one trip that happened and ended. Iba a París cada verano is a habit that repeated. The full decision guide lives in our preterite vs imperfect lesson.

Why fui means both "I went" and "I was"

Look up the preterite of ser (to be) and you'll find fui, fuiste, fue, fuimos, fuisteis, fueron. Identical. Not similar, not mostly the same: ir and ser share their entire preterite, form for form.

That's the fu- family from the top of the page doing its work. Ir borrowed its past from Latin esse, and ser inherited its past from the same verb, so the two ended up with one shared set of six forms. The ser conjugation chart shows the other half of the story.

Before you panic: this ambiguity causes native speakers exactly zero trouble, because what comes after the verb settles it instantly.

The test in one line: if a place follows (usually after a), it's ir. If a noun or adjective describing the subject follows, it's ser. Fui a Madrid has a destination. Fui profesor has a job title. Read the whole sentence and you'll never guess wrong.

Now the gift. You just learned six forms and got two verbs for them. Every hour you spend on fui, fuiste, fue is an hour spent on the preterite of ser as well, and ser is the verb you'll use more than any other in Spanish.

Ir conjugation chart: future and conditional

Good news arrives. From here on, ir behaves. Both of these tenses are built from the complete infinitive plus the standard endings that every Spanish verb uses, so there is nothing new to memorize. This half of the ir conjugation chart is the friendly half.

Ir future tense (iré)

Ir conditional (iría)

The compound tenses are just as tame. They all pair a form of haber with one unchanging participle, ido: he ido (I have gone), había ido (I had gone), habré ido (I will have gone). Note that Spanish uses this where English says "been": he ido a Japón dos veces means "I've been to Japan twice."

The gerund is yendo, one of the very few Spanish gerunds that opens with a y: voy yendo (I'm on my way). If you want the exhaustive list, including forms nobody says out loud, it's on SpanishDict's conjugator.

Ir subjunctive and imperative conjugation

The last stretch of the ir conjugation covers wishes and commands. The subjunctive shows up after wanting, hoping, doubting, and asking: quiero que (I want that), espero que (I hope that), ojalá (hopefully). At beginner level you only need to recognize these forms, not produce them under pressure.

Present subjunctive of ir (vaya)

Imperfect subjunctive of ir (fuera)

Yes, you've seen fuera before. The imperfect subjunctive of ir is identical to the imperfect subjunctive of ser, exactly like the preterite. That's the second and last overlap, and it's the same fu- family behind both.

Every -ra form also has an -se twin with the same meaning: fuese, fueses, fuese, fuésemos, fueseis, fuesen. The -se set reads as slightly more formal, so you'll meet it more in books than at dinner.

Ir imperative: telling someone to go

Three things in that table deserve a closer look.

Ve, not ves. The tú command is ve, two letters, no s. You'll hear ves used as a command constantly, and it isn't one: ves is the tú present tense of ver, "you see." Ve a comprar el pan is correct; ves a comprar el pan is the error, and it's common enough in casual speech that plenty of native speakers make it. A genuine coincidence hides here too, because ve is also the tú command of ver. Ve la película (watch the movie) and ve a casa (go home) are spelled identically. The a plus a destination tells you it's ir, the same trick that sorted out fui.

Vamos, not vayamos. For "let's go," speakers say vamos, borrowed straight from the present indicative rather than the subjunctive you'd expect everywhere else. Vayamos is grammatical but sounds noticeably formal. The negative behaves normally: no vayamos.

Vámonos and vete. Attach the reflexive pronoun and you get the pronominal versions. Vamos plus nos gives vámonos (let's get going), with the final -s dropping before nos, so you never write vamosnos. The tú version is vete (off you go), and its negative is no te vayas.

Irse: why me voy is not the same as voy

Add reflexive pronouns to ir and you get irse, a verb with its own meaning: to leave, to go away, to be off. Plain ir points at where you're headed. Irse points at the fact that you're departing.

Irse reuses the whole ir conjugation with a pronoun bolted on the front: me voy, te vas, se va, nos vamos, os vais, se van in the present, and me fui, te fuiste, se fue, nos fuimos, os fuisteis, se fueron in the preterite.

A few sentences to hear it working. Me voy, ya es tarde (I'm off, it's late). Se fue sin despedirse (he left without saying goodbye). Nos vamos de vacaciones el lunes (we're off on holiday on Monday). Irse also stretches to things disappearing, as in se te irá el dolor (the pain will go away), and to forgetting: lo sabía, pero se me fue (I knew it, but it slipped my mind).

Six everyday Spanish phrases built on ir

Ir powers some of the highest-frequency expressions in spoken Spanish. Learn these six and you'll start catching them the same day you start listening.

That's the complete ir conjugation, from voy to fuesen. Chant the present six, make peace with fui, and let the rest sit here as reference until a real sentence needs it. When you want the next irregular heavyweight, the hacer conjugation chart follows the same road map, and every free lesson we have lives on the Spanish hub.