Presente de indicativo: ir

Ir ("to go") is the most spectacularly irregular verb in Spanish. From the infinitive ir you would never guess the present-tense forms: voy, vas, va, vamos, vais, van. There is no recognisable stem at all. The forms are descendants of a different Latin verb (vādere, "to advance"), grafted onto the infinitive of īre. You simply have to memorise the paradigm — but the payoff is enormous, because ir is one of the half-dozen most frequent verbs you will hear and use every day in Spain.

Full conjugation

A few things deserve attention. The yo form voy ends in -y (one of only four verbs in Spanish that do: soy, estoy, voy, doy). The vosotros form vais is a single syllable, stressed on the a — and it carries no written accent because monosyllables generally do not take one. That makes vais a small spelling trap: it looks like it should pattern with habláis or coméis, but the diacritic is absent.

Ir + a + place

The most common pattern is ir a + [destination]. The preposition a is obligatory — Spanish never says voy la oficina. When a meets the masculine article el, the two contract into al: voy al cine, voy al supermercado.

The construction also works with abstract destinations and events: voy a una boda, voy a un concierto, voy a clase.

Ir a + infinitive — the spoken future

This is the single most important thing to learn about ir. In modern peninsular Spanish, ir a + infinitive is the default way to talk about the near future, the same way going to works in English.

Vamos as "let's"

Spanish does not have a dedicated Let's form for affirmative commands. Instead, vamos a + infinitive does the job — and vamos alone is the equivalent of Let's go.

In negative let's commands, Spanish switches to the nosotros subjunctive (no vayamos todavía, "let's not go yet"), but the affirmative side leans on vamos.

Ir vs venir — a fundamental clash with English

This is where English-speaking learners stumble hardest. Ir always describes motion away from the speaker's current location, even when English uses come. Venir describes motion toward the speaker's current location.

If your friend calls and says "dinner's ready," the English answer is I'm coming! In Spanish, the answer is Voy — because you are moving from where you are to where your friend is, not toward your current location.

The third sentence uses venir (ven) because the speaker is asking the listener to approach the speaker's location. In the first two, the speaker is moving away from their own current position, so Spanish uses ir — regardless of how English would phrase it.

Ir + en + means of transport

To say how you go somewhere, Spanish uses en + [vehicle]: en coche, en metro, en autobús, en tren, en avión, en bici. The article is normally dropped. The one exception is a pie ("on foot"), which uses a rather than en.

This is one of those small constructions that English-speakers consistently get wrong by translating literally (by car → ✱por coche). Stick to en, except for a pie.

Irse — "to leave, to go away"

The reflexive form irse adds a sense of leaving, departure that bare ir does not always carry. Voy answers "where are you going?"; me voy announces "I'm off, I'm out of here."

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

• Ir is fully irregular: voy, vas, va, vamos, vais, van. Memorise the whole paradigm — there are no shortcuts.
• Vais is a one-syllable form with no written accent, unlike habláis or coméis.
• Ir a + infinitive is the workhorse future in spoken Spain — much more common than the morphological future (saldré, haré) in everyday talk.
• Vamos a + infinitive also functions as let's [do something] in affirmative commands.
• Spanish ir tracks distance from the speaker's current location. When English uses come to mean I'm on my way to you, Spanish uses voy, never vengo.
• The reflexive irse highlights leaving: me voy = "I'm off."

Next: pair ir with tener and haber, and you have the three most useful irregular verbs in the language.