Faire, meaning to do in French, is one of the most common verbs in the language. Today we’ll present every faire conjugation chart for easy reference, in every tense and mood. First we’ll conjugate faire in all of the simple tenses of each mood, and then we’ll cover the compound tenses.

The French verb Faire: Introduction

Faire is an irregular verb, with several conjugations that need to be memorized. It’s considered a third-group verb, since many of its conjugations don’t follow the pattern of regular -er, -ir verbs, or even of other -re verbs.

Once you know your faire verb conjugation patterns, the same model can be applied to a number of derivitave verbs that follow exactly the same patterns. Refaire, défaire, satisfaire, or contrefaire are a few of the more common derivitaves of the French verb faire.

The easiest translation of faire in English is simply to do, but it can also take other translations depending on what is being done. This is not a lesson on the meanings of faire or its derivatives, since those could constitute a full post on their own. Our focus here is just on how to conjugate faire in French.

We’ll keep our explanations of each tense to a minimum, just noting the important points to keep in mind when conjugating faire in each one. We’ll also point out the conjugations where the pronunciations can sometimes lead to confusion.

For lessons on the various French tenses themselves, we include links to our dedicated grammar posts as we cover each one. If you’re a total beginner, start with our in-depth lesson on French verb conjugation and verb tenses. Now let’s get started with our faire conjugation charts!

Faire: Impersonal forms

Before we get into our conjugations, let’s cover the impersonal forms of faire. The base form, faire, is the infinitif, while the participe, fait, appears in all of the compound tenses later on. In the compound tenses, faire takes the auxiliary verb avoir.

Faire conjugation: Indicative mood

We’ll start with the four simple tenses in l’indicatif: le présent, l’imparfait, le passé simple, and le futur simple. Then we’ll see the four compound tenses: le passé composé, le plus-que-parfait, le passé antérieur, and le futur antérieur.

Faire conjugation: présent de l’indicatif

These are the most important faire conjugations to learn by heart. The most-irregular form is in the second-person plural: vous faites. Note that the first- and second-person singular faire conjugations are identical: je fais and tu fais. The pronunciation for the first-person plural conjugation has a “z” sound rather than an “s” sound in nous faisons.

Faire conjugation: imparfait

In its imparfait conjugation, faire exhibits the stem fais-.  As we saw above with nous faisons, the pronunciation of the -s- sounds like a “z.”

Faire conjugation: passé simple

Faire conjugation: futur simple

Our futur simple faire conjugation takes another irregular stem, fer-.

Note that the je conjugation is different from the tu form when we conjugate faire in the futur simple, unlike the other simple indicative tenses of faire.

Many French speakers confuse the spellings between grammatical persons here because they are pronounced identically. Pay attention to the endings of the homophones tu feras and il fera, as well as nous ferons and ils feront.

Likewise, the first-person singular conjugation is pronounced the same way as several of the grammatical persons in the conditional, so be careful to differentiate the futur simple je ferai from the conditionnel conjugations of je ferais, tu ferais, il ferait, and ils feraient.

Faire conjugation: passé composé

Faire conjugation: plus-que-parfait

Faire conjugation: passé antérieur

Faire conjugation: futur antérieur

Faire conjugation: Conditional mood

Now let’s take a look at the faire conjugation charts for le conditionnel. The faire conditionnel conjugation takes the same irregular stem as the futur simple: fer-. The conditionnel endings on this stem are regular.

Be careful to choose the right endings when you write these, because the pronuncations are identical between four of these conjugations: je ferais, tu ferais, il ferait, and ils feraient. As we saw above, these are also pronounced the same as the first-person singular conjugation in le futur simple: je ferai.

Faire conjugation: conditionnel présent

Faire conjugation: conditionnel passé

Faire conjugation: Subjunctive mood

Now we’re ready to cover the faire subjonctif conjugations. We’ll start with the two subjunctive tenses that are actually used, le subjonctif présent and le subjonctif passé. Then we’ll cover the two archaic subjunctive tenses, l’imparfait du subjonctif and le plus-que-parfait du subjonctif.

Faire conjugation: subjonctif présent

The irregular subjunctive stem of faire is fass-. To this stem, we just add the regular subjunctive endings.

Note that, in contrast to the indicative tenses where the spelling was the same between the je and tu conjugations, the spelling here is identical between the first- and third-person singular conjugations: je fasse and il fasse.

Four of the conjugations are pronounced identically: je fasse, tu fasses, il fasse, and ils fassent.

Faire conjugation: subjonctif passé

Faire conjugation: subjonctif imparfait

Faire conjugation: subjonctif plus-que-parfait

Faire conjugation: Imperative mood

We’re nearly done with all of our faire conjugations, with just the command form remaining in case you need to tell someone to do something in French.

In the faire imperatif, we use the exact same conjugations as faire présent de l’indicatif.

We present both impératif tenses in the same faire conjugation chart here.

Conclusion: Faire conjugation in French

We’ve just seen the full conjugation charts for the French verb faire, in every mood and tense. As an irregular verbe du troisième groupe, many forms of faire need to be learned outright.

The présent de l’indicatif conjugations need to be memorized, since they’re used so much in everyday speech. From there, we saw that our French faire conjugation exhibits several irregular stems including fais- in l’imparfait, fer- in le futur simple and le conditionnel présent, and fass- in le subjonctif présent.

Between these different stems and the multiple identical pronunciations, the conjugation of faire in French will take some practice to get perfect. With this comprehensive reference post on how to conjugate faire in French, you’re well on your way to mastering all the conjugations of faire!