The future perfect — futuro compuesto or futuro perfecto — is one of those tenses that English speakers tend to underestimate when learning Spanish. In English it is a slightly bookish form ("by next year I will have finished"), used only occasionally. In peninsular Spanish, it is alive and frequent, both for completed-by-a-future-deadline meanings and — even more commonly — as a way of guessing about something that has just happened. Habrá llegado tarde otra vez ("he must have arrived late again") is something you will hear in any Spanish household. This page covers the formation in detail; the usage page explores all three of its main jobs.
The formula
The future perfect is built on the same pattern as every other compound tense in Spanish: an auxiliary form of haber + a past participle. The only twist is that the haber sits in the morphological future.
haber (futuro) + participio
| Subject | haber (future) |
| Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| yo | habré | comido | habré comido |
| tú | habrás | comido | habrás comido |
| él / ella / usted | habrá | comido | habrá comido |
| nosotros / nosotras | habremos | comido | habremos comido |
| vosotros / vosotras | habréis | comido | habréis comido |
| ellos / ellas / ustedes | habrán | comido | habrán comido |
Notice the accents: habré, habrás, habrá, habréis, habrán — every form carries a written accent except habremos. The pattern is identical to the simple future of any verb (the nosotros form is the only unaccented one). This is a small but constant source of typos: habreis without the accent is a spelling error.
Para mañana, habré terminado el informe.
By tomorrow, I'll have finished the report.
Cuando lleguéis, ya habremos cenado.
By the time you (all) arrive, we'll have had dinner.
Habrás visto la noticia, ¿no?
You've probably seen the news, right?
"Haber" is its own beast
Two things about haber you must internalise before this tense becomes second nature.
First, haber here is the auxiliary haber, not the existential hay/había/habrá used to say "there is/was/will be." They share spelling but behave differently. The auxiliary is conjugated for all six persons (habré, habrás, habrá…); the existential always uses the third-person singular form, regardless of what follows. In the future perfect, you only ever deal with the auxiliary haber.
Second, haber in compound tenses is inseparable from the past participle. Nothing — no adverb, no negation, no pronoun — slips between them.
✅ No habré terminado nunca a tiempo.
I probably won't have finished on time.
❌ Habré nunca terminado a tiempo.
Ungrammatical — adverbs cannot sit between haber and the participle.
Pronouns go in front of habré, never between habré and the participle:
✅ Para entonces, ya lo habré leído.
By then, I'll have already read it.
❌ Para entonces, habré ya lo leído.
Ungrammatical on multiple counts — pronoun cannot follow habré.
The past participle: regular formation
The participle is what carries the lexical meaning ("eaten," "lived," "spoken"). For regular verbs:
| Verb class | Ending | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| -ar verbs | -ado | hablar → hablado, trabajar → trabajado |
| -er verbs | -ido | comer → comido, beber → bebido |
| -ir verbs | -ido | vivir → vivido, salir → salido |
So:
Habremos trabajado más de diez horas para cuando acabemos.
We'll have worked more than ten hours by the time we finish.
Habrás vivido en Madrid casi una década, ¿no?
You'll have lived in Madrid for almost a decade, won't you?
Irregular past participles — the dozen you must know
A small set of high-frequency verbs have irregular past participles. You cannot get far in the future perfect (or any compound tense) without these committed to memory:
| Infinitive | Past participle | Future perfect (yo) |
|---|---|---|
| abrir | abierto | habré abierto |
| cubrir | cubierto | habré cubierto |
| decir | dicho | habré dicho |
| escribir | escrito | habré escrito |
| hacer | hecho | habré hecho |
| morir | muerto | habré muerto |
| poner | puesto | habré puesto |
| resolver | resuelto | habré resuelto |
| romper | roto | habré roto |
| ver | visto | habré visto |
| volver | vuelto | habré vuelto |
| imprimir | impreso (also: imprimido) | habré impreso |
Compound verbs inherit the irregularity: descubrir → descubierto, componer → compuesto, deshacer → deshecho, prever → previsto, devolver → devuelto. Once you know the base, every compound is free.
Para el viernes, habré escrito el primer capítulo.
By Friday, I'll have written the first chapter.
Cuando llegues, ya habré hecho la cena.
When you arrive, I'll have already made dinner.
The participle does NOT agree
Unlike adjectives ending in -ado/-ido (which agree in gender and number), the participle in compound tenses is invariable. It stays -ado or -ido (singular, masculine-shape) no matter what the subject is.
✅ Marta habrá terminado el informe.
Marta will have finished the report. (terminado stays masculine singular)
❌ Marta habrá terminada el informe.
Wrong — participle does not agree with subject in compound tenses.
✅ Los chicos habrán llegado tarde.
The boys will have arrived late. (llegado stays singular)
❌ Los chicos habrán llegados tarde.
Wrong — no plural on the participle in compound tenses.
This is a real point of difficulty for speakers coming from Italian or French, both of which have agreement rules in compound tenses. Spanish does not. The participle is frozen.
The peninsular vosotros form
Just like in every other tense, the peninsular vosotros form has its own ending. For the future perfect, it is habréis + participle, with an accent on the é.
Para cuando volváis, habremos cenado.
By the time you (all) come back, we'll have had dinner.
¿Habréis terminado para las seis?
Will you (all) have finished by six?
Para entonces ya habréis aprobado todos los exámenes.
By then you (all) will have passed all the exams.
The spelling trap: *habreis is wrong — it must be habréis with the accent. The accent is required because the stress falls on the é; without the written accent, the default Spanish stress would land elsewhere.
A quick conjugation of "vivir"
| Subject | Future perfect of "vivir" |
|---|---|
| yo | habré vivido |
| tú | habrás vivido |
| él / ella / usted | habrá vivido |
| nosotros / nosotras | habremos vivido |
| vosotros / vosotras | habréis vivido |
| ellos / ellas / ustedes | habrán vivido |
And of "hacer" (irregular participle: hecho):
| Subject | Future perfect of "hacer" |
|---|---|
| yo | habré hecho |
| tú | habrás hecho |
| él / ella / usted | habrá hecho |
| nosotros / nosotras | habremos hecho |
| vosotros / vosotras | habréis hecho |
| ellos / ellas / ustedes | habrán hecho |
What it means: a quick preview
The future perfect has three main jobs in peninsular Spanish. They are covered in depth on the usage page, but here is the headline summary so you can attach meaning to the form as you drill it.
1. Completed by a future deadline. This is the textbook use, mirroring English "by next year, I will have…":
Para diciembre, habré terminado el máster.
By December, I'll have finished my master's.
2. Conjecture about a recent past event — by far the most common spoken use in Spain:
No contesta el teléfono. Habrá salido a comprar.
He's not answering the phone. He must have gone out to do some shopping.
3. An action completed before another future action, often in a cuando/para cuando clause:
Cuando llegues, ya habré comido.
When you arrive, I'll have already eaten.
In all three uses, the formation is the same — haber in the future + past participle. The interpretation depends on context.
Negation and questions
Negate by putting no in front of the whole compound:
No habré terminado para entonces, lo siento.
I won't have finished by then, sorry.
No habrán salido todavía, son las seis y media.
They probably haven't left yet, it's only six thirty.
For questions, intonation does most of the work in spoken Spanish:
¿Habrás acabado para las diez?
Will you have finished by ten?
¿Cuántas personas habrán venido a la conferencia?
How many people will have come to the conference? (or: 'I wonder how many came...')
Common Mistakes
❌ Para mañana, habré terminada el informe.
The participle doesn't agree — even with a feminine speaker it stays 'terminado'.
✅ Para mañana, habré terminado el informe.
By tomorrow, I'll have finished the report.
❌ ¿Habreis cenado ya?
Missing the accent — vosotros form requires 'habréis'.
✅ ¿Habréis cenado ya?
Will you (all) have eaten already?
❌ Habré ya leído el libro.
Adverbs cannot sit between haber and the participle.
✅ Ya habré leído el libro. / Habré leído ya el libro.
I'll have already read the book.
❌ Para diciembre, habré escribido la tesis.
'escribir' has an irregular participle: 'escrito'.
✅ Para diciembre, habré escrito la tesis.
By December, I'll have written my thesis.
❌ Lo habré hacido todo antes de las cinco.
'hacer' has an irregular participle: 'hecho'.
✅ Lo habré hecho todo antes de las cinco.
I'll have done it all before five.
Key Takeaways
- The future perfect = haber in the future + past participle. Five forms have a written accent (habré, habrás, habrá, habréis, habrán), only habremos does not.
- The vosotros form is habréis + participle — accent mandatory.
- Past participles ending in -ado/-ido are invariable in compound tenses. No agreement with the subject.
- A dozen high-frequency irregular participles (dicho, hecho, escrito, visto, vuelto, puesto, abierto, roto, muerto, cubierto, resuelto, impreso) must be memorised.
- Nothing — no adverb, no pronoun, no negation — can sit between haber and the participle.
Now practice Spanish
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Start learning Spanish→Related Topics
- Usos del futuro compuestoB1 — When and why peninsular Spanish reaches for habré + participio — completed-by-deadline events, the gossip-grade conjectural use ('he must have arrived already'), and the sequencing of two future actions.
- Haber como auxiliar de los tiempos compuestosA2 — How haber + past participle builds every compound tense in Spanish, and why the construction is far more frequent in peninsular Spanish than in Latin America.
- Futuro: raíces irregularesB1 — The twelve Spanish verbs with irregular future stems — tendr-, pondr-, saldr-, vendr-, valdr-, podr-, sabr-, cabr-, querr-, habr-, har-, dir- — grouped by pattern, with the same endings as regular verbs and the bonus that these stems also power the conditional.
- Futuro de probabilidad: 'serán las cinco'B1 — How peninsular Spanish uses the morphological future to express conjecture about the present — a cardinal feature of the language.
- Futuro simple: verbos regularesA2 — The Spanish simple future for regular verbs — endings -é, -ás, -á, -emos, -éis, -án attached to the whole infinitive, the accents that are obligatory on every form except nosotros, and why ir a + infinitive often wins in everyday peninsular speech.