The combination estar + gerund is the single most frequent construction in spoken Brazilian Portuguese. Estou comendo, está chovendo, estão dormindo — you will hear it dozens of times in any conversation. This page is a focused drill on the gerund side of that pairing: which gerund goes with estar, and how the construction behaves when you move estar through the tenses. The full grammar of the construction — its aspectual meaning, when to prefer it over the simple present, the nuance versus ficar and andar — lives on its dedicated page.
A two-second reminder of the construction
The progressive is built from two parts: a conjugated form of estar that carries the tense and person, plus an invariable gerund that carries the lexical meaning.
Estou comendo, te ligo depois.
I'm eating, I'll call you later.
Está chovendo muito hoje.
It's raining hard today.
Eles estavam dormindo quando cheguei.
They were sleeping when I arrived.
In each of these, estar changes (estou, está, estavam) but the gerund (comendo, chovendo, dormindo) stays exactly the same. That division of labor is the whole trick: let estar do the conjugating; let the gerund stay frozen.
The gerund never changes — estar does all the work
This is the most important morphological point, and it is great news for English speakers, because English works the same way. In "I am eating / she was eating / they will be eating," the -ing form never changes — only "to be" does. Brazilian Portuguese is identical:
| Person | Estar (present) |
| Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| eu | estou | estou trabalhando | I'm working |
| você / ele / ela | está | está trabalhando | you're / he's / she's working |
| nós | estamos | estamos trabalhando | we're working |
| vocês / eles / elas | estão | estão trabalhando | you all / they're working |
Notice the gerund column never moves: it is trabalhando for everyone. The accents on está and estão are obligatory — without them the words are misspellings, and esta (no accent) is a completely different word ("this").
Tô indo pro trabalho agora.
I'm heading to work now.
O bebê tá dormindo, fala baixo.
The baby's sleeping, talk quietly.
The same gerund across every tense of estar
Because the gerund is frozen, you can express progressive aspect in any tense simply by conjugating estar into that tense and leaving the gerund alone. Here is fazer (fazendo) carried through the main tenses:
| Tense of estar | Construction | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Present | estou fazendo | I'm doing |
| Imperfect (past) | estava fazendo | I was doing |
| Preterite | estive fazendo | I was doing / I spent time doing |
| Future | estarei fazendo | I'll be doing |
| Conditional | estaria fazendo | I'd be doing |
| Present subjunctive | esteja fazendo | (that) I be doing |
The everyday past progressive uses the imperfect estava, which describes an action in progress in the past — covered in detail in Estava + Gerúndio.
Eu estava cozinhando quando você ligou.
I was cooking when you called.
The conditional is genuinely useful and worth drilling, because it pairs naturally with se (if) clauses:
Eu estaria estudando agora se não estivesse tão cansado.
I'd be studying right now if I weren't so tired.
The future and subjunctive forms are less frequent in casual speech but appear in writing and careful speech:
Amanhã a esta hora estaremos voando para o Recife.
This time tomorrow we'll be flying to Recife.
Espero que ele esteja descansando em casa.
I hope he's resting at home.
Irregular verbs behave normally here
A point worth stressing for the drill: even verbs with wildly irregular conjugations have regular gerunds, so they slot into estar + gerund without any surprise. The irregularity, if any, lives in estar, never in the gerund.
| Infinitive | Gerund | In the progressive |
|---|---|---|
| fazer | fazendo | está fazendo |
| pôr | pondo | está pondo |
| vir | vindo | está vindo |
| ter | tendo | está tendo |
| ir | indo | está indo |
Cuidado, o vidro está caindo!
Careful, the glass is falling!
Não atendo agora porque estou pondo as crianças para dormir.
I can't pick up right now because I'm putting the kids to bed.
Note the slightly odd-looking está vindo ("is coming"): the gerund vindo is identical in spelling to the past participle of vir, but in the progressive it can only be the gerund, so there is no ambiguity in practice.
Já estou indo, me espera!
I'm on my way, wait for me!
Position of object pronouns
A small but high-frequency detail when drilling: in Brazil, object and reflexive pronouns normally sit before the gerund in everyday speech, attached loosely (Estou me arrumando), rather than hooked onto the gerund with a hyphen (the arrumando-me of formal/European style).
Estou me arrumando, já desço.
I'm getting ready, I'll come down soon.
As crianças estão se divertindo na piscina.
The kids are having fun in the pool.
The hyphenated estou arrumando-me is (formal/literary) and sounds bookish in conversation; you will see it in print but rarely hear it in Brazil.
Common Mistakes
❌ Estou a comer agora.
Incorrect for Brazil — estar a + infinitive is European Portuguese.
✅ Estou comendo agora.
I'm eating now.
❌ Eles está dormindo.
Incorrect — estar must agree with the plural subject.
✅ Eles estão dormindo.
They're sleeping. (conjugate estar, never the gerund)
❌ Eu estava cozinhandos quando você ligou.
Incorrect — the gerund has no plural; it never takes -s.
✅ Eu estava cozinhando quando você ligou.
I was cooking when you called.
❌ Esta chovendo lá fora.
Incorrect — está (the verb) needs its accent; esta means 'this'.
✅ Está chovendo lá fora.
It's raining outside.
❌ Se eu pudesse, estarei viajando agora.
Incorrect — after a se (imperfect subjunctive) clause, use the conditional estaria.
✅ Se eu pudesse, estaria viajando agora.
If I could, I'd be traveling right now.
Key Takeaways
- The progressive is estar (conjugated) + gerund (frozen). Conjugate estar; never touch the gerund.
- The gerund is invariable — no agreement, no plural, the same for every person.
- To express the progressive in another tense, just move estar into that tense: estava fazendo, estarei fazendo, estaria fazendo.
- In casual speech, estou/está/estão often reduce to tô/tá/tão (informal).
- Drill this until it is automatic — it is the most-used construction in spoken Brazilian Portuguese.
Now practice Portuguese
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Start learning Portuguese→Related Topics
- Estar + Gerúndio: The ProgressiveA1 — How Brazilian Portuguese builds the present progressive with estar plus the gerund — and why estar a comer marks you as Portuguese.
- The Gerund (Gerúndio) in BR PortugueseA2 — An overview of the Brazilian gerund — its five core uses, how to form it, and why it is one of the most audible markers of spoken BR Portuguese.
- Forming the Gerund (-ando, -endo, -indo)A1 — How to build the Portuguese gerund from any verb, the three irregular stems, and the everyday uses of this form in Brazilian speech.
- Estava + Gerúndio: Past ProgressiveA2 — Building the past progressive with the imperfect of estar plus the gerund, and choosing between estava comendo and the plain imperfect comia.
- Present Indicative of EstarA1 — How to conjugate estar in Brazilian Portuguese, when to use it for states and locations, and the standard tô/tá/tão contractions of everyday speech.