This article has a misleading title: there is no future tense in Finnish! This, however, doesn’t mean Finns can’t talk about the future. They just do it through other means than conjugating the verb into the future tense.

You’ll have to learn a different way of thinking when talking about future events in Finnish. The English “I go to the living room” translates as “Minä menen olohuoneeseen.” That’s clear up to there: both use the simple present tense. However, where in English you would use the future tense – “I will go to the living room” – in Finnish you would still use the same sentence: “Minä menen olohuoneeseen“.

This page progresses from the most commonly used ways to express intent to the more rare and old-fashioned ways

1. Using the Present Tense for the Future

In Finnish you will normally use the present tense to express what happens in the future. In these kind of sentences, you can see from the context of the sentence whether we’re talking about right now or about the future.

2. Using Adverbs to Refer to the Future

We can supplement a sentence with the present tense with an expression of time to show that we mean a future event. Some adverbs that express time are: pian “soon”, huomenna “tomorrow”, ensi viikolla “next week” and ensi vuonna “next year” . You can read more about adverbs of time on this page.

Note how the verb of all the following sentence appears in the present tense.

3. Using Objects to Refer to Future Completion

In sentences with an object, the use of the partitive versus the genitive can be used to express intent.

3.1. The simplified rule (for beginners):

Note: Simplified doesn’t mean it’s a bad rule. Especially in the beginning, there are a lot of more important things to learn that the intricate rules of the object. Just stick with this main rule for the time being:

3.2. Complications to the object rules (for intermediate and advanced students):

If you are an intermediate or advanced student, you will learn that things are more complicated than that. While the main rule usually holds true, there are different things to also take into consideration. For example:

4. Using Verbs that Express Intent

If you want to emphasise the future, you can use the verb aikoa. It means “to intend to, to plan”. In spoken language, you also have the verb meinata, which has the same meaning.

While this way to express the future might seem the easiest to language learners, it is certainly not as common as the previous three options. Instead of “Mihin aiot matkustaa“, it is much more common to ask “Mihin matkustat ensi kesänä“, in which “ensi kesänä” expresses that we’re dealing with a future event.

5. Using Verbs that Express Movement

Verbs such as mennä (to go), tulla (to come) and lähteä (to leave) can also be used to express future events indirectly. They express movement, which allows them to show future events.

Some verbs that have to do with movement will require the third infinitive when you link two verbs. This has to do with verb rections.

The verb tulla can also be used in a special sentence construction. This is a fairly rare type of sentence. In the examples below, you can see that the verb tulla is not used in a concrete way; we’re not going anywhere at all in these sentences. It just expresses that an action will be the result of the current situation.

It’s important to notice that linguists usually disapprove of this sentence construction because it’s redundant. Instead of “En tule antamaan hänelle ikinä anteeksi“, you can just as well say “En anna hänelle ikinä anteeksi” without losing any of the future intent.

6. Using the Perfect Tense to Express Intent

You can use the perfect tense in very specific situations to express intent. For this, you combine the present and the perfect tense together in a sentence. In these occurrences, the verb that appears in the present tense will express the future event.

In its core, we could see these sentences as part of the second usage I mentioned: we’re using the present tense to express intent. The kun-sentence just functions as an expression of time, much in the same way as the adverbs huomenna and ensi viikolla.

7. On Oleva -Sentence Construction

This way of expressing future events is only used in religious and old language texts. This form was pretty popular when the Bible was first translated to Finnish (e.g. Totuus on tekevä teidät vapaiksi aka “The truth will set you free”).

It does appear in some current written sources, as a fancy or celebratory way of referring to the future. Eg. “Valtiovallan kosto on oleva julma!” or “Hän on saava palkinnon.”

These are some of the ways to express intent or future events in Finnish! As you can see the future tense in Finnish has been replaced by many different ways. Keep in mind that the first of the things listed on this page – using the present tense – is still the most used and most natural way to express the future tense in Finnish.

Related posts:

The Finnish Verbtypes The Negative Imperfect – Negatiivinen Imperfekti Että-Participle – Referatiivirakenne The Passive Present Participle – TAVA-Participle