Irish Gaelic Future Tense: How to Talk About What Comes Next

One of the first walls new learners of Irish hit is the verb system. You have mastered the present, maybe dipped into the past, and then the future tense arrives with a new set of endings and a handful of verbs that refuse to follow the rules. The good news is that the Irish future tense is far more regular than it first looks, and once you understand two or three patterns, a huge proportion of sentences open up: plans, promises, predictions and polite requests.

In this guide you will learn how to form the Irish future tense for regular verbs, how the crucial verb bí (to be) works in the future, which irregular verbs you must memorise, and how to build a daily drill that makes the endings automatic. This is practical Gaelic grammar aimed at beginners and early intermediate learners who want to speak, not just pass a test.

The Regular Future: Add the Right Ending

The backbone of the Irish future tense is wonderfully predictable. For most verbs, Irish uses the future stem built from the verbal root, then adds a person ending. The good news is that the future endings are the same for both regular conjugations.

For the first conjugation, take the root of the verb, broadly the second person singular tú form of the imperative, and use these endings:

• -faidh mé (I will) with a slender ending, -eoidh mé for verbs ending in a slender consonant
• -fidh tú (you will)
• -fidh sé / sí (he / she will)
• -fimid (we will)
• -fidh sibh (you plural will)
• -fidh siad (they will)

So dún (close) gives dúnfaidh mé, dúnfidh tú, dúnfidh sé, dúnfimid, dúnfidh sibh, dúnfidh siad. The second conjugation, typified by verbs ending in -aigh or -igh, drops that ending and uses -eoidh: ceannaigh (buy) becomes ceannóidh mé, ceannóidh tú, and so on.

Notice that the endings repeat. Once you memorise the future suffix -faidh / -fidh / -eoidh, you simply attach the correct person ending. This is why the future is, for most learners, easier than the past, which involves lenition and a whole set of autonomous forms.

The Question and the Negative

To ask a question in the future, Irish places the particle an before the verb, which lenites an initial consonant if the verb starts with one:

• An dtiocfaidh tú? (Will you come?)
• An gceannóidh tú é? (Will you buy it?)

The negative uses ní, which also lenites:

• Ní thiocfaidh mé (I will not come)
• Ní cheannóidh mé é (I will not buy it)

For the verb bí, the question particle an and the negative ní behave in the usual way, but the future form is irregular, so it deserves its own treatment.

One subtlety beginners often miss is that the question marker an does not wait for the verb stem you already know. It changes the initial sound. A verb that begins with a hard consonant like c, t or p will show lenition in the question, and a verb beginning with b will instead gain an m: An mbeidh tú ann? That extra m before the b is a bridge sound that Irish speakers hear as natural, and it is simply something you absorb through listening rather than memorising rules for.

Bí: The Crucial Irregular Verb

The verb to be underpins almost everything you want to say about the future, from I will be there to it will be raining. Unlike regular verbs, the future of bí is built on the stem beidh:

• Beidh mé (I will be)
• Beidh tú (you will be)
• Beidh sé / sí (he / she will be)
• Beimid (we will be)
• Beidh sibh (you plural will be)
• Beidh siad (they will be)

The questions and negatives are An mbeidh? (will there be / will he be) and Ní bheidh (there will not be). You will meet beidh constantly, in weather talk (Beidh sé fliuch amárach – it will be wet tomorrow), in plans (Beidh mé sa bhaile – I will be at home) and in polite requests (An mbeidh cupán tae agat? – Will you have a cup of tea?).

Because beidh is so frequent, learning it early gives you an outsized return on your effort. Many beginners find that a week of drilling the beidh paradigm unlocks more real conversation than a month of memorising vocabulary lists.

The Other Irregular Verbs

Irish has eleven irregular verbs, and six of them have distinct future forms you should learn explicitly:

• faigh (get): gheobhaidh mé (I will get)
• téigh (go): rachaidh mé (I will go)
• tar (come): tiocfaidh mé (I will come)
• tabhair (give): tabharfaidh mé (I will give)
• feic (see): feicfidh mé (I will see)
• ith (eat): íosfaidh mé (I will eat)

Note how gheobhaidh and rachaidh look nothing like their roots. These are the forms you must simply memorise, and they are worth the effort because they are among the most common verbs in everyday speech. Once you know them, sentences like Rachaidh mé go dtí an Ghaeltacht an samhradh seo (I will go to the Gaeltacht this summer) become possible.

The remaining irregular verbs, such as déan (do/make), abair (say), clois (hear) and beir (carry), tend to follow a more recognisable pattern: déanfaidh, déarfaidh, cloisfidh, beirfidh. The full set is small, so a structured grammar guide can help you see the wider system, just as our explanation of the Irish past tense shows how the different tenses build on one another.

For English speakers there is a second comfort: the Irish future carries a sense of certainty and arrangement that the English future often conveys with will plus a plan. When a learner says Rachaidh mé, it can mean I will go, I am going or I am off, depending on context. You do not need to choose between a future marker and a plan marker the way you might in other languages, because Irish folds both into the same verb form. That economy means one tense carries a lot of everyday meaning, which is exactly why mastering it pays off so quickly.

Using the Future in Real Conversation

The future tense is not only for talking about tomorrow. Irish uses it for well-wishing, polite suggestions and fixed phrases that you will hear constantly:

• Feicfidh mé thú (I will see you / see you later)
• Beimid ag caint amárach (we will be talking tomorrow)
• An mbeidh tú ann? (will you be there?)
• Tiocfaidh sé (he will come / he is coming)

It also merges with prepositions and particles to form compound futures. With ag for the progressive, you get beidh mé ag obair (I will be working), a construction that is extremely useful for describing ongoing future activity. Combined with chun (in order to), you can say beidh mé ag dul chun … to express intentions.

Time Words That Put the Future in Focus

The future tense rarely travels alone: it needs the small words that tell the listener when. The most useful are amárach (tomorrow), an tseachtain seo chugainn (next week), an chéad mhí seo chugainn (next month) and i gceann tamaill (in a while). Because Irish often places these at the end of the sentence, the verb stays in a prominent position:

• Beidh mé i mo chónaí i nGaillimh an bhliain seo chugainn. (I will be living in Galway next year.)
• Tiocfaidh sí amárach ar a hocht. (She will come tomorrow at eight.)

Learning the future tense without these time markers leaves you able to form grammatically correct sentences that float in an unclear timeline, so it is worth attaching one time phrase to each verbal pattern you drill. When you say amárach, the future form feels natural rather than learned, and the sentence immediately sounds like real Irish rather than a textbook exercise.

The conditional also deserves a mention, because Irish learners frequently confuse its forms with the future. The conditional (-fainn, -fá endings) is used for I would and for polite offers, and it looks similar to the future on the surface. A single rule of thumb: if the sentence can take would in English, it is the conditional, not the future. Keeping the two in separate mental folders, and drilling them in the same session so the contrast is visible, prevents one of the most common intermediate mistakes.

Building a Daily Drill

Grammar only sticks through retrieval practice. A simple, effective daily drill for the future tense takes about five minutes:

1. Write the beidh paradigm from memory each morning.
2. Conjugate three regular verbs you met the previous day, out loud.
3. Translate three quick sentences into Irish using the future, for example I will go to the shop (Rachaidh mé go dtí an siopa).
4. Test yourself on the six irregular futures from the list above.

Pairing this with a spaced repetition deck turns the drill into long-term memory. For ideas on structuring such a deck, see our guide on building your own spaced repetition deck for Gaelic, which explains the exact card format and review intervals.

You do not need to master every verb at once. Focus on beidh, rachaidh, tiocfaidh and gheobhaidh, the four you will use every day, and let the regular endings do the rest of the work. Within a fortnight most learners can describe their weekend plans, make promises and ask what someone is going to do, all with the future tense working quietly in the background.

From Theory to Habit

The Irish future tense rewards steady, small effort far more than marathon study sessions. Lock in the regular endings, learn beidh until it is reflexive, memorise the handful of irregular forms, and then apply it in real sentences rather than verb tables.

The fastest way to make the future tense part of your active Irish is to use it the moment you learn it. Promise someone you will do something, plan an outing, and describe what the weather will be like. Every sentence you produce is a step toward fluency, and every retry sharpens the pattern. Start with the four key verbs, and the rest of the language begins to fall into place.

If you are beginning from scratch, our beginners guide to Irish Gaelic grammar sets out the word order and verb patterns you need alongside this tense, and if commitment is your worry, the research on whether adults can learn Irish shows that consistent practice matters more than age. Finally, steer clear of the usual traps by reviewing the common mistakes learners make in Irish before you start drilling.