Quick answer
Voy a buscar piso en marzo. Será difícil, pero encontraré algo.
I am going to look for a flat in March. It will be hard, but I will find something. Plans take ir a; predictions take the future.
The words of this lesson
A plan and a guess are different things
A friend asks what you are doing in March. You answer voy a buscar piso y voy a cambiar de trabajo. These are decisions already taken, with the steps half in place — that is the home of ir a plus the infinitive, and in everyday spoken Spanish it covers most of what English calls the future.
Then the friend asks whether it will be easy. Now you are guessing, not planning, and the simple future appears: será difícil, habrá mucha competencia, encontraré algo al final. The dividing line is not how far away it is. It is whether you are announcing a decision or making a prediction.
How each one is built
Ir a is easy: conjugate ir and add the plain infinitive. Voy a llamarte, vas a ver, vamos a cenar fuera, van a mudarse. Nothing else changes.
The simple future takes the whole infinitive and adds one set of endings for all three verb groups: -é, -ás, -á, -emos, -éis, -án. So hablar gives hablaré, comer gives comeré, vivir gives viviré. A dozen common verbs shorten the stem and then take the same endings: tener → tendré, poder → podré, hacer → haré, decir → diré, salir → saldré, venir → vendré, poner → pondré, saber → sabré, haber → habrá.
The present, and the future that is not about the future
There is a third option, and it is the one you will hear most for fixed arrangements: the plain present. Mañana salgo a las seis, el lunes empiezo en la empresa nueva, el tren sale a las diez. If it is in the diary, the present is enough and the future would sound heavy.
And Spanish uses the simple future for a guess about right now, which surprises English speakers. ¿Dónde está Ana? — Estará en el tren. She is probably on the train. Serán las diez means it is about ten. Nothing is in the future there at all; the tense is doing the work of "probably".
Where you are matters
Latin America leans even harder on <span class="es-inline">ir a</span> in speech, and in Mexico and the Caribbean the simple future is mostly reserved for predictions and for the "probably" use. Spain uses <span class="es-inline">será</span> for guesses constantly: <span class="es-inline">serán las diez</span>.
Memory trick
Decision already taken → voy a. Prediction or guess → future endings. In the diary → plain present.
A short dialogue
Typical mistakes
Voy buscar piso en marzo.
Voy a buscar piso en marzo.
Ir needs a before the infinitive; dropping it is the most common slip with this structure.
Mañana iré al médico a las nueve, tengo cita.
Mañana voy al médico a las nueve.
A fixed appointment in the diary takes the plain present in natural Spanish; the future tense makes it sound like a prediction.
¿Dónde está Ana? — Ella es probablemente en el tren.
— Estará en el tren.
Spanish expresses a guess about the present with the simple future, and location always takes estar.
Practice
Practise these talking about the future
0/8 matched — tap a Spanish word, then its translation
Check yourself
You have already signed the contract. How do you announce it?