Futur II is the tense German textbooks list last and German speakers use most surprisingly. On paper it is the "future perfect" — an action that will have been finished by some future point. In practice, the overwhelmingly common use is something else entirely: a confident guess about the past. Mastering Futur II means learning to hear it as "must have" far more often than as "will have."
How Futur II is formed
Futur II stacks two things you already know: the Futur I auxiliary werden and the perfect infinitive (the past participle plus haben or sein in the infinitive). The order at the clause end is fixed:
werden (conjugated, position 2) … Partizip II + haben/sein (infinitive, at the end)
| Auxiliary in the perfect | Pattern | Example |
|---|---|---|
| haben-verbs | werden + Partizip II + haben | Ich werde es gemacht haben. |
| sein-verbs | werden + Partizip II + sein | Er wird angekommen sein. |
The choice between haben and sein is the same choice you make in the Perfekt: motion and change-of-state verbs (and sein, bleiben) take sein; everything else takes haben. See haben vs sein.
Bis morgen Abend werde ich den Bericht fertig geschrieben haben.
By tomorrow evening I will have finished writing the report. (literal future perfect)
In zwei Stunden wird der Zug in München angekommen sein.
In two hours the train will have arrived in Munich.
The whole verbal complex — werde … geschrieben haben, wird … angekommen sein — forms one long bracket, with the conjugated werden near the front and the participle-plus-auxiliary at the very end.
Meaning 1: the genuine future perfect
This is the meaning that matches the English future perfect. You stand at a point in the future and look back on an action that is, from that vantage point, already complete. A bis-phrase ("by …") is the usual signpost.
Bis Ende des Monats werden wir die Wohnung renoviert haben.
By the end of the month we will have renovated the apartment.
Wenn du zurückkommst, werde ich schon gegessen haben.
When you get back, I'll already have eaten.
These are perfectly correct, but be honest with yourself: outside of a bis-deadline or a "by the time you…" clause, you will rarely need this reading.
Meaning 2: a confident guess about the PAST — the real workhorse
In everyday and journalistic German, Futur II most often expresses certainty-flavored speculation about something that already happened. It is the structural twin of Futur I's present-probability use: just as Er wird zu Hause sein means "he's probably home (now)," Er wird zu Hause gewesen sein means "he was probably home / he must have been home (then)." The flavor word wohl is almost a fixture.
Er ist nicht gekommen — er wird wohl krank gewesen sein.
He didn't come — he must have been ill. (guess about the past, the typical use)
Sie wird den Zug verpasst haben, deshalb ist sie noch nicht da.
She'll have missed the train, that's why she isn't here yet.
Das wird wohl ein Missverständnis gewesen sein.
That was probably a misunderstanding. (a polite, hedged conclusion about the past)
In all three, nothing is in the future. The speaker is reasoning backward from present evidence ("he's absent," "she's not here," "things went wrong") to a likely past cause. This is why linguists call Futur II largely evidential: it marks an inference rather than a literal time.
Why German has this and English only half does
English "will have" can graze this meaning — "The keys? Oh, she'll have taken them with her" is exactly the past-assumption use. But in English it stays a side use; the unmarked way to guess about the past is "must have" or "probably did." In German, wird … gewesen sein is a fully standard, even slightly elevated, way to draw a careful conclusion. German offers two routes to the same idea, and the Futur II route sounds more measured and educated:
Er muss krank gewesen sein.
He must have been ill. (with the modal müssen: blunt logical necessity)
Er wird krank gewesen sein.
He'll have been ill / he was probably ill. (with Futur II: a softer, more reflective inference)
The Futur II version is a touch more tentative and is common in writing and careful speech; see expressing uncertainty and probability.
A note on the perfect infinitive
The piece doing the heavy lifting is the perfect infinitive: gemacht haben, gegangen sein. It is the same building block you would use after a modal ("Er muss es vergessen haben") — see the double infinitive for how these stacks behave. Once you can build gemacht haben / angekommen sein, Futur II is just werden placed in front of it.
Common Mistakes
❌ Ich werde es gemacht gehabt haben.
Wrong: doubled auxiliary. Use werden + participle + haben, not an extra gehabt.
✅ Ich werde es gemacht haben.
I will have done it.
❌ Er wird angekommen haben.
Wrong auxiliary: ankommen is a motion verb and takes sein, not haben.
✅ Er wird angekommen sein.
He will have arrived. / He'll have arrived (by now).
❌ Ich werde haben es gemacht.
Wrong order: the participle and the infinitive auxiliary both go to the very end — gemacht haben, not haben … gemacht.
✅ Ich werde es gemacht haben.
I will have done it.
❌ Sie wird müde.
Wrong: this only means 'she's getting tired' (werden as change-of-state). For a past guess you need the perfect infinitive. (intended: she was probably tired)
✅ Sie wird müde gewesen sein.
She must have been tired. / She'll have been tired.
❌ Er wird das Buch las haben.
Wrong: needs the past participle, not a finite past form. lesen → gelesen.
✅ Er wird das Buch gelesen haben.
He'll have read the book. / He must have read the book.
The Präteritum-form trap (las instead of gelesen) is common because English speakers reach for a past form when the meaning is about the past — but German grammar still demands the participle inside the perfect infinitive.
Key Takeaways
- Form: werden (position 2) + Partizip II
- haben/sein (infinitive, at the end).
- Future-perfect use: "will have done," usually flagged by a bis-deadline — correct but uncommon.
- Past-assumption use (the frequent one): "must have / will probably have," usually flagged by wohl — an inference about the past, not a real future.
- Pick haben or sein by the same rule as the Perfekt.
- It pairs naturally with the perfect/double infinitive and overlaps in meaning with modal "must have" — see Futur I for the present-tense twin of this pattern.
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Start learning German→Related Topics
- Futur I: Future and Probability with werdenB1 — How to form the Futur I with werden plus an infinitive, and why it more often signals probability about the present than the actual future.
- The Perfekt of Modals: The Double InfinitiveB2 — Why modal verbs (and lassen, sehen, hören) form their Perfekt with a substitute infinitive instead of a participle, and why the auxiliary jumps forward in subordinate clauses.
- Perfekt Auxiliary: haben vs seinA2 — How to choose between haben and sein in the German Perfekt — motion and change of state take sein, and a direct object flips it to haben.
- Expressing Certainty, Doubt, and ProbabilityB2 — The full German epistemic scale from certain to doubtful — adverbs like bestimmt, wahrscheinlich, vielleicht and möglicherweise, the false friend eventuell, and the distinctly German use of modal verbs (muss, dürfte, könnte, mag) and Futur I (wird wohl) to express how likely something is.
- dürfen: Permission and ProhibitionA2 — How to use dürfen for permission, prohibition (nicht dürfen = 'must not'), polite offers, and the dürfte probability marker.