If you only learn one Romanian future, learn this one. When Romanians talk about what is going to happen — tomorrow, next week, in five minutes — they overwhelmingly reach for o să plus a conjunctive verb: o să merg, o să te sun, o să vedem. The literary voi merge future exists, but it belongs to newspapers and speeches. In real conversation, o să is the default, and getting comfortable with it is one of the fastest ways to sound natural.
How it is built
The formula is wonderfully simple on the surface and slightly tricky underneath:
o + să + [verb in the conjunctiv prezent]
The word o is a frozen, invariable particle. It does not change for person, number, or anything else. It is o whether the subject is eu, tu, noi, or ei. The only part that inflects is the verb after să.
This is the catch: the verb is not in the indicative. It is in the conjunctiv (the "să-subjunctive"). For most persons this looks identical to the present indicative, but the third person (singular and plural) takes a special conjunctive form. This is exactly why the conjunctiv should be learned early rather than treated as an advanced topic — the most common future in the language depends on it.
Full paradigm: a merge (to go)
| Person | o-să future | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| eu | o să merg | I will go |
| tu | o să mergi | you will go |
| el / ea | o să meargă | he / she will go |
| noi | o să mergem | we will go |
| voi | o să mergeți | you (pl.) will go |
| ei / ele | o să meargă | they will go |
Notice that o is rigidly constant down the whole column, while the verb moves through the persons. Notice too that el and ei share the same form, o să meargă — that is the conjunctive third person, and it is not merge (the indicative form). This is the single most important thing to get right on this page.
O să merg la piață mâine dimineață.
I'll go to the market tomorrow morning.
Crezi că o să meargă și ei cu noi?
Do you think they'll come with us too?
A second model: a face (to do/make)
| Person | o-să future |
|---|---|
| eu | o să fac |
| tu | o să faci |
| el / ea | o să facă |
| noi | o să facem |
| voi | o să faceți |
| ei / ele | o să facă |
Again: the 3rd person is facă, not face. The conjunctive third person of most class-3 verbs ends in -ă.
Ce o să faci diseară?
What are you doing tonight?
Nu știu ce o să facă șefa cu raportul ăsta.
I don't know what the boss is going to do with this report.
Everyday examples
The o-să future is the natural choice for plans, promises, predictions, and offers in conversation.
O să te sun mai târziu, acum sunt ocupat.
I'll call you later, I'm busy right now.
Stai liniștit, o să fie bine.
Don't worry, it'll be fine.
O să ne vedem săptămâna viitoare, nu?
We'll see each other next week, right?
Dacă plouă, o să rămânem acasă.
If it rains, we'll stay home.
O să-ți placă filmul, sunt sigură.
You'll like the film, I'm sure.
Notice the last example: clitic pronouns attach to o să in the usual way, contracting to o să-ți, o să-l, o să-i. The clitic sits between o să and the verb.
Where the "o" comes from
Historically, o is a worn-down third-person form of a vrea (to want) — the same verb that gave the literary future its voi/vei/va auxiliaries. Over time this o stopped agreeing with the subject and froze into a single invariable marker. So although it began life as a personal verb form, in modern Romanian you should treat o as a fixed grammatical word, like a particle. This frozen behaviour is exactly what distinguishes the o-să future from its cousin the am să future, where the auxiliary still inflects (am să, ai să, are să).
Comparison with English
English builds the future with an invariable auxiliary too — will never changes for person ("I will, she will, they will"). In that respect o behaves just like will. The difference is what follows: English uses a bare verb (will go), whereas Romanian inserts să and puts the verb in the conjunctiv. So the mental template for an English speaker is:
will + bare verb → o să + conjunctiv verb
The trap is the third person. English speakers, used to an unchanging verb after will, naturally say o să merge by analogy with the indicative — but the conjunctiv demands o să meargă.
Common Mistakes
❌ Eu am o să merg la școală.
Incorrect — 'o' must never be inflected or combined with a personal auxiliary.
✅ Eu o să merg la școală.
I'll go to school.
❌ Ei or să vină mâine.
Incorrect — 'o' does not become 'or' in the plural; it stays invariable.
✅ Ei o să vină mâine.
They'll come tomorrow.
❌ El o să merge cu noi.
Incorrect — uses the indicative 'merge' instead of the conjunctive.
✅ El o să meargă cu noi.
He'll come with us.
❌ O să facem ce o să vrei tu... o să spune ea.
Incorrect — 3sg should be the conjunctive 'spună', not the indicative 'spune'.
✅ O să facem ce o să vrei tu, o să spună ea.
We'll do whatever you want, she'll say.
❌ O să a venit deja.
Incorrect — o să takes a present conjunctiv, not a past form.
✅ O să vină în curând.
He'll come soon.
Key Takeaways
- o să is the default future of spoken Romanian — use it freely in conversation.
- o is invariable: it never agrees with the subject. Only the verb after să inflects.
- The verb is in the conjunctiv, so the 3rd person (sg and pl) takes its special conjunctive form: o să meargă, o să facă, o să vină — never o să merge.
- Clitic pronouns slot between o să and the verb: o să te sun, o să-l văd.
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Start learning Romanian→Related Topics
- The Romanian Futures: OverviewA2 — A map of Romanian's four ways to talk about the future — voi merge, o să merg, am să merg, and the bare present — and, crucially, which register each one belongs to.
- The Literary Future (voi + infinitive)B1 — How to form Romanian's formal future — the auxiliary voi/vei/va/vom/veți/vor plus the bare short infinitive — where it belongs (news, literature, officialdom), and how clitics attach to it.
- The Future with am să / ai săB1 — The personally-inflected colloquial future built from 'a avea' plus 'să' plus the conjunctive — am să plec, ai să vezi — and how it differs from the invariable o-să future.
- Conjunctiv Present: FormationA2 — How to form the present conjunctiv — identical to the indicative except for the 3rd person, which flips the theme vowel.
- Irregular Conjunctiv: să fie, să aibă, să dea, să steaB1 — The handful of irregular 3rd-person conjunctiv forms — fie, aibă, dea, stea, știe, ia, bea, vrea — that you must memorize because they are the most frequent verbs in the language.