When it comes to French verb conjugation, there are really just three main sets of conjugations. These correspond to the three verb groups, which we can roughly divide into -er, -ir, and -re verbs. In today’s post we present the full French er verb conjugation charts for regular verbs in this first group.

This post is designed simply as a quick reference on how to conjugate er verbs in French, so we’ll keep our additional explanations to a minimum. For in-depth lessons on specific French tenses and verb forms, please click through to our dedicated grammar posts wherever we link to them. If you’re a total beginner, we recommend you start with our comprehensive primer on French verb conjugation.

How to conjugate regular ER verbs in French

Our focus today is on French er verbs, which we recognize by the -er ending of their infinitives. This group of verbs is known in French as les verbes du premier groupe, so many references simply refer to them as 1st-group verbs rather than -er verbs. These -er verbs constitute by far the majority of French verbs.

Among the -er verbs in the first group, there are about 20 possible variations in conjugation patterns that are considered irregular. (The verb aller is so highly irregular that it isn’t even included as a first-group verb!) Today’s post will focus strictly on regular -er verb conjugation.

Remember that to conjugate a verb we just start with the stem (known in French as le radical), and then add the right ending. To get this stem for our -er verbs in French, we just chop off the -er from the infinitive. We’ll include all of the verb endings in our -er verb conjugation charts, along with the conjugation using a typical regular -er verb. We’ll use aimer as our sample -er verb.

We’ll start out with the impersonal verb forms, and then work our way through the four French moods: impératif, conditionnel, subjonctif, and impératif. In our compound tenses we’ll use the auxiliary verb avoir, but don’t forget that we can also use the auxiliary verb être with verbs of movement, with reflexive verbs, and when using the passive voice.

Now let’s get started on our -er verb conjugation in French!

Impersonal forms

In addition to the standard conjugations which reflect a timeframe and a grammatical person, French verbs have several other forms that are not technically considered conjugations. We’ll start off by covering these impersonal forms of -er verbs in French.

Infinitif

The infinitive is the unconjugated form of a verb that you’ll find in a dictionary. It’s this form that defines our French -er verbs, since the infinitive always ends in -er.

Infinitif passé

Participe présent

Participe passé

Participe

Le participe is known in English as the past participle. Le participe cannot be used on its own, but it forms an integral part of compound verb forms while also having other uses.

L’indicatif

In the indicative mood, we’ll start with the four simple tenses (présent, imparfait, passé simple, futur simple) and then move on to the compound tenses (passé composé, plus-que-parfait, passé antérieur, futur antérieur). Remember that the compound tense conjugations all just use the participle of our -er verb.

Présent indicatif conjugation: -er verbs

Imparfait indicatif conjugation: -er verbs

Passé simple conjugation: -er verbs

Futur simple conjugation: -er verbs

Passé composé conjugation: -er verbs

For the passé composé, we conjugate the auxiliary verb in the présent de l’indicatif and then add the -er verb’s participle.

Plus-que-parfait conjugation: -er verbs

For the plus-que-parfait de l’indicatif, we conjugate the auxiliary verb in the imparfait de l’indicatif and then add the -er verb’s participle.

Passé antérieur conjugation: -er verbs

For the passé antérieur, we conjugate the auxiliary verb in the passé simple and then add the -er verb’s participle.

Futur antérieur conjugation: -er verbs

For the futur antérieur, we conjugate the auxiliary verb in the futur simple and then add the -er verb’s participle.

Le conditionnel

Here are the French -er verb conjugation charts for the conditional mood.

Présent conditionnel conjugation: -er verbs

Conditionnel passé conjugation: -er verbs

For the conditionnel passé, we conjugate the auxiliary verb in the présent conditionnel and then add the -er verb’s participle.

Le subjonctif

Here we present the French -er verb conjugation charts for the sujunctive mood, including the archaic tenses (subjonctif imparfait and plus-que-parfait) that are usually just seen in historic texts.

Présent subjonctif conjugation: -er verbs

Note that these present subjunctive conjugations are identical to common indicative tenses: the singular forms and the third-person plural form are all the same as le présent, while the nous and vous forms are the same as l’imparfait.

Imparfait subjonctif conjugation: -er verbs

Subjonctif passé conjugation: -er verbs

For the subjonctif passé, we conjugate the auxiliary verb in the présent subjonctif and then add the -er verb’s participle.

Subjonctif plus-que-parfait conjugation: -er verbs

For the subjonctif plus-que-parfait, we conjugate the auxiliary verb in the imparfait subjonctif and then add the -er verb’s participle.

L’impératif

The final mood for our French -er verb conjugation is l’impératif, which is used for giving commands. Even though it may sound a bit strange to command anyone to love, we’ll continue to show aimer for our French -er verb examples.

Présent impératif conjugation: -er verbs

The impératif -er verb conjugations are almost identical to the présent de l’indicatif, except for the tu form which drops the -s.

Impératif passé conjugation: -er verbs

For the impératif passé, we conjugate the auxiliary verb in the impératif présent and then add the -er verb’s participle.

This article is brought to you by LingoCulture, Where you can get unlimited private French classes via Zoom with native teachers for a flat monthly rate. It’s the closest thing to immersion you can get without living in a French-speaking country. Click here to learn more.

French -er verb conjugation: Conclusion

This brings us to the end of our lesson on how to conjugate -er verbs in French.

We started out with a brief introduction to French -er verbs, also known as first-group verbs, noting that they’re the most common verbs in the language. Then we dove straight in to our regular French -er verb conjugation charts, starting with the impersonal forms and then covering every mood and tense.

Rather than go into detail on many of the grammatical aspects we touched on here, we included links to our dedicated posts that cover each of these topics in greater detail. As for today’s post, we recommend bookmarking this page in case you ever need a quick reference on French -er verb conjugation!