Tenses in French: A Complete Map

French has more verb tenses than any English speaker is used to handling, but the system is more orderly than it looks. Most tenses come in matched simple-and-compound pairs, every compound tense is built from one of two auxiliaries, and four of them — the passé simple, the passé antérieur, the imparfait du subjonctif, and the plus-que-parfait du subjonctif — are essentially confined to literary writing. This page lays out the complete inventory in one place so you can see the architecture, decide which tenses to prioritize, and find the dedicated pages for each one. Treat it as a reference; you do not need to learn it all at once.

The big picture

French verbs distribute their tenses across four finite moods (indicatif, conditionnel, subjonctif, impératif) and the non-finite forms (infinitif, participe, gérondif). Within each finite mood, tenses come in two flavours.

• Simple tenses — one conjugated word: je parle, je parlais, je parlerai, que je parle, je parlerais.
• Compound tenses — an auxiliary verb (avoir or être) plus the past participle of the main verb: j'ai parlé, j'avais parlé, j'aurai parlé, que j'aie parlé, j'aurais parlé.

Every compound tense is anchored to a corresponding simple tense — its auxiliary is in that simple tense.

Once you internalize this pattern — every compound is a simple-tense auxiliary plus a past participle — the inventory shrinks dramatically. You only need to learn one rule for forming compounds, plus the conjugation of avoir and être in each simple tense.

Indicatif: eight tenses

The indicative is by far the largest mood. Four simple tenses, four compound tenses.

Simple

Compound

A note on the passé composé

The passé composé is the workhorse past tense of conversational French. It is what you use to talk about completed events in the past — what you did this morning, what happened yesterday, what occurred last year. It is built from the present of avoir (or être) plus the past participle: j'ai mangé, je suis allé, nous avons compris, elle est partie.

In conversation, the passé composé covers nearly everything that English uses I did and I have done for. Spoken French has effectively merged the two English categories — both J'ai mangé une pizza hier soir and J'ai déjà mangé are passé composé, and the difference between "I ate" and "I have eaten" is read from context, not from the verb form.

A note on the passé simple

The passé simple (je parlai, tu parlas, il parla, nous parlâmes, vous parlâtes, ils parlèrent) is the simple-tense counterpart of the passé composé, and it has been almost entirely driven out of spoken French. You will not hear it in conversation in France or in Quebec; speakers use the passé composé instead. But the passé simple remains the standard tense of literary narration — novels, biographies, history books, fairy tales. Il était une fois... (Once upon a time...) is followed by passé simple verbs in any traditional fairy tale.

For learners, the passé simple is recognition-only until at least B2. You need to identify it when reading; you do not need to produce it. Even highly educated French speakers will often hesitate over the nous and vous forms, which are rare even in writing.

For the recognition table and the patterns by group, see The Passé Simple: Overview.

A note on the passé antérieur

The passé antérieur (j'eus parlé) is the rarest indicative tense in any register. It exists only in literary writing, and only after a small set of conjunctions of immediacy (aussitôt que, dès que, quand, lorsque, après que) when the main verb is itself in the passé simple. You will encounter it reading classical French fiction; you will essentially never need to produce it.

In conversation and modern non-fiction prose, the same idea is carried by the plus-que-parfait followed by the passé composé: Aussitôt qu'il avait fini son discours, il a quitté la salle.

Conditionnel: two tenses

The conditionnel is small — just one simple tense and one compound tense — but it does outsized work. Polite requests, hypothetical outcomes, future-in-past, reported claims, and the result clause of si-conditional sentences all live here.

The conditionnel présent and the futur simple share the same stem — both are built on the infinitive — and differ only in the endings. Je parlerai (future, /paʁləʁe/) vs je parlerais (conditional, /paʁləʁɛ/). For most regular verbs, this is a single-letter contrast on the page and a subtle vowel contrast in the mouth. See Pronunciation: Conditionnel vs Imparfait for the audio details.

Subjonctif: four tenses (two productive, two literary)

The subjunctive has two simple tenses and two compound tenses. In modern French, only the présent and the passé are productive; the imparfait and the plus-que-parfait are confined to formal literary writing.

In classical French, the choice between que je parle (present subjunctive) and que je parlasse (imperfect subjunctive) was governed by the same sequence-of-tenses rule that French shares with Latin and Italian: a present tense in the main clause selected the present subjunctive, a past tense in the main clause selected the imperfect subjunctive. Je veux qu'il vienne (present main → present subjunctive); Je voulais qu'il vînt (past main → imperfect subjunctive). In modern French, this rule has collapsed. Speakers and writers now use the present subjunctive in both contexts: Je voulais qu'il vienne. The imperfect subjunctive survives only in literary writing and in ironic or archaizing styles.

For more, see The Subjunctive: Overview and Imparfait and Pluperfect Subjunctive.

Impératif: one tense (and a rare compound)

The imperative has a single productive tense — the present — and a rare compound form, the impératif passé (aie parlé, ayons parlé, ayez parlé), which is essentially confined to instructions about deadlines and sequencing in formal contexts.

For everything you need on the imperative, see The Imperative: Overview.

Non-finite forms

These do not carry person marking. Each has a present and a past form (the past participle is itself one of the forms).

The participe présent (parlant) is rarely used as a verb form in modern French; it surfaces mainly as an adjective (un livre intéressant, une histoire émouvante). The gérondif (en parlant, en mangeant, en partant) is used productively to express simultaneity, manner, or means. The infinitif passé (avoir parlé) appears in formal contexts and after the preposition après (where French requires the past infinitive, never the simple infinitive — après avoir fini, never après finir).

What is alive, what is dying, what is dead

Be honest about which tenses to prioritize. Here is the realistic ranking for a learner heading to France or Quebec.

Use every day (master first)

• Présent indicatif — covers present and many "have been" constructions
• Passé composé — completed past in everyday speech
• Imparfait — past habits, descriptions, ongoing background
• Futur simple — future events
• Futur proche (aller
  • infinitive) — even more common in conversation than the futur simple
• Conditionnel présent — polite requests, hypotheticals
• Impératif — commands

Need actively but later

• Subjonctif présent — productive in subordinate clauses; non-negotiable for sounding educated
• Plus-que-parfait — earlier past, when needed
• Conditionnel passé — future-in-past in reported speech, regrets ("I would have...")
• Subjonctif passé — completed action in a subjunctive context
• Futur antérieur — used for past speculation as much as for true future-perfect

Recognize but rarely produce

• Passé simple — alive in literary writing; you must recognize it when reading novels and history books
• Passé antérieur — pure literary, after aussitôt que/dès que/quand in narrative

Reading-only for almost all learners

• Subjonctif imparfait — pure literary; survives in jokes, archaizing prose, and one or two fixed expressions (ne fût-ce que, fût-il roi)
• Subjonctif plus-que-parfait — pure literary; even rarer than the imparfait
• Impératif passé — formal deadlines, very rare

A note on the auxiliaries

Every compound tense uses one of two auxiliaries: avoir or être. The choice depends on the main verb, not on the speaker. Manger always takes avoir (j'ai mangé, j'avais mangé, j'aurai mangé). Aller always takes être (je suis allé, j'étais allé, je serai allé). When a verb takes être, the past participle agrees in gender and number with the subject (elle est allée, nous sommes allés, elles sont allées). With avoir, the participle is invariable — except when a direct object precedes the verb, in which case the participle agrees with that direct object. This is the most distinctively French complication in the verb system.

The plus-que-parfait is the simplest illustration of the auxiliary mechanism: it is the imparfait of the auxiliary plus the past participle. J'ai mangé (présent of avoir + participle) becomes j'avais mangé (imparfait of avoir + participle). Same for être: je suis allé becomes j'étais allé. The same logic produces every compound tense in every mood.

For the full mechanics, see Choosing the Auxiliary.

A reference table you can come back to

A pronunciation note worth flagging

Two pairs of tenses in the table above sound nearly identical and trip up learners constantly.

• Futur simple vs conditionnel présent: je parlerai /paʁləʁe/ vs je parlerais /paʁləʁɛ/. The contrast is between a closed /e/ and an open /ɛ/ in the final syllable. Many native speakers in casual speech blur this distinction, but in careful pronunciation and in dictation it matters.
• Imparfait vs conditionnel présent: je parlais /paʁlɛ/ vs je parlerais /paʁləʁɛ/. These are clearly distinguished by the -er- in the conditional, but learners sometimes lose track of which form they are producing.

See Conditionnel vs Imparfait Pronunciation for the details.

Common mistakes

Where to go next

Master the indicative simple tenses first (The Présent, The Imparfait). Then move into the passé composé with its all-important auxiliary choice (Choosing the Auxiliary). After that, branch into the conditional and the subjunctive — both essential for sounding educated. Save the literary tenses (passé simple, passé antérieur, subjonctif imparfait, subjonctif plus-que-parfait) for the reading phase of your studies; you will encounter them in fiction and journalism long before you need to produce them — and even then, you may never need to produce some of them at all.