Futur Proche: Going to / Immediate Future

The futur proche is the future of conversation. Built from aller (in the present tense) plus an infinitive, it gives you a way to talk about coming events without having to learn the futur simple stem of every verb. Je vais manger (I'm going to eat). Tu vas partir (you're going to leave). On va voir un film (we're going to see a movie). The construction is so close to English be going to + verb that it transfers almost without friction — you swap I'm going to for je vais, drop the to before the infinitive, and you have a working future.

This page covers how to build the futur proche, where it sits in the future-time landscape, how it handles negation and pronouns, and where it differs subtly from English going to. It is one of the highest-payoff grammar topics in early French: a single page gives you a productive way to talk about every future event you might mention in conversation.

Formation

The futur proche has two pieces:

aller (present indicative) + infinitive

The first piece, aller in the present, gives the person and the tense marker. The second piece — the bare infinitive — names the action.

The infinitive does not change for person, tense, or number — it stays in its dictionary form. All the work happens in aller.

For the present-tense conjugation of aller, see aller in the présent indicatif. It is one of the most irregular verbs in French and has to be memorized cold.

What the futur proche means

The futur proche presents an action as upcoming, planned, or anticipated from the speaker's current perspective. The original sense of aller (to go) has bleached almost entirely — je vais manger doesn't suggest physical movement toward a meal, just that the meal is in the speaker's near horizon.

There are three main flavors:

1. Near-future (most common)

Events about to happen — in the next few minutes, hours, or days:

This is what the name futur proche (near future) literally describes, and it is by far the most frequent use.

2. Intentional / planned future

The speaker's plans, even if those plans extend further into the future. Distance is not a hard limit:

The action doesn't have to be near in time. It has to be near in the speaker's planning horizon — something they have decided, anticipated, or set in motion.

3. Imminent inference / visible upcoming event

When something visible in the present indicates that an event is about to happen:

The futur simple cannot do this. Il pleuvra would be a forecast, not an inference from the gathering clouds you can see right now. This visible imminence reading is one of the clearest places where the two French futures separate.

When to use futur proche vs. futur simple

Many textbooks teach the choice as a question of distance: futur proche for near future, futur simple for distant future. This is misleading in modern French. The real distinction is more about register and speaker stance:

In conversation, native speakers reach for the futur proche almost reflexively. Je vais manger feels normal; je mangerai in casual speech feels slightly stiff. In writing — especially journalism, formal correspondence, and announcements — the futur simple takes over.

Negation: ne...pas wraps aller

To negate the futur proche, ne...pas wraps around the conjugated aller, not the infinitive:

Subject + ne + aller (present) + pas + infinitive

The infinitive sits outside the negation, exactly as the past participle sits outside in the passé composé. The same template covers other negative pairs: ne...jamais (never), ne...rien (nothing), ne...plus (no longer):

In casual speech, the ne often drops entirely (this is general for spoken French negation):

In writing or formal speech, keep the ne. In casual conversation, you'll hear it dropped routinely.

Pronoun position: clitic before the infinitive

When the action involves a direct or indirect object pronoun, that pronoun sits before the infinitive, not before aller. This is the opposite of what some learners expect.

The reasoning: the infinitive is the verb that "owns" the object, so the clitic attaches to it. Aller in the futur proche has no object of its own; it's a tense marker.

The same rule applies to reflexive pronouns when the infinitive is reflexive:

Note that the reflexive pronoun matches the subject of the infinitive, which in the futur proche is the same as the subject of aller. Je vais me coucher, tu vas te coucher, il va se coucher, nous allons nous coucher, vous allez vous coucher, ils vont se coucher.

Aller in the futur proche, aller meaning "to go"

A potential source of confusion: aller literally means "to go." So what happens when you actually want to say "I'm going to go somewhere"?

The answer is simple: the infinitive after aller in a futur proche construction can itself be aller. You get je vais aller:

The double aller sounds redundant in writing — French speakers often shorten to a simple present-as-future when the destination is explicit:

But je vais aller au marché is also entirely correct and common.

Comparison with English: a near-perfect match

The futur proche maps onto English be going to + verb almost one-to-one. The structures are parallel:

The original "going" sense is bleached in both languages — neither I'm going to die nor je vais mourir implies physical motion. Both languages took the same path: a verb of movement grammaticalized into a tense marker, so completely that speakers no longer feel the original meaning.

The minor differences:

1. English uses a progressive be going to (am going, is going, are going); French uses simple present (vais, vas, va, allons, allez, vont). No progressive in French.
2. No to before the French infinitive: je vais manger, not je vais à manger. Don't insert à.
3. French places clitics before the infinitive (je vais le manger); English leaves the object after (I'm going to eat it). Different position, same meaning.

Questions

The futur proche forms questions exactly like any other tense — by intonation, by est-ce que, or by inversion (formal). Inversion swaps aller with the subject pronoun:

The t- insertion before vowel-initial subject pronouns applies as usual: va-t-elle venir ? (Is she going to come?), never va-elle.

A subtle point: futur proche of être and avoir

You can use the futur proche of être and avoir, just like any other verb. Je vais être (I'm going to be), je vais avoir (I'm going to have):

In conversation, je vais avoir, tu vas avoir, on va être are all completely natural. Don't feel you have to use the futur simple just because avoir and être have famous irregular futur stems (aur-, ser-). Both options work; the futur proche just sounds more conversational.

Present indicative for scheduled events

English uses present forms for scheduled near-future events (I'm leaving tomorrow, the train arrives at six). French does the same with the simple present, which competes with the futur proche for these contexts:

See futur-vs-present-future for the choice between them.

Common Mistakes

Mistake 1: Using infinitive of aller as auxiliary.

Mistake 2: Inserting à before the infinitive.

Mistake 3: Conjugating the infinitive.

Mistake 4: Putting object pronouns before aller instead of the infinitive.

Mistake 5: Putting pas after the infinitive.

Mistake 6: Conjugating aller wrong in third-person plural.

Key takeaways

The futur proche is built with aller in the present indicative + a bare infinitive — je vais manger, tu vas partir, on va voir, nous allons faire, vous allez comprendre, ils vont arriver. It is the dominant future of conversational French, used for near-future events, planned and intended actions, and visible imminence. Distance in time is not the main constraint; the real distinction with the futur simple is register, with futur proche for speech and futur simple for writing and formal announcements.

Negation wraps ne...pas around aller (je ne vais pas manger); object and reflexive pronouns sit before the infinitive (je vais le manger, je vais me coucher). The construction maps cleanly onto English be going to, with two minor differences: French uses simple present of aller (no progressive), and there is no à before the infinitive. Once you have memorized aller in the present, you can produce a future of any French verb — no irregular stems required.