Ir Verbs in Portuguese: The Complete Guide

You memorized "falar" and "comer" without much trouble. Then you hit "partir," "sentir," and "ouvir," and suddenly the pattern you thought you understood started throwing curveballs. Why does "dormir" become "durmo" in the "eu" form and nothing like that anywhere else? Why does "pedir" turn into "peço" out of nowhere? And why does everyone keep telling you that "ir," the most common verb in the whole language, barely looks like a verb at all once you conjugate it?

Welcome to the third and final conjugation group in Portuguese: verbs ending in "-ir." This post is the complete map. You'll get the full regular pattern using "partir," "abrir," and "decidir" as models, across every tense you're likely to need: present, simple past, imperfect, future, conditional, and all three subjunctive tenses, plus the imperative, gerund, and past participle. Then you'll get the stem-changing verbs that trip up even intermediate learners, the outright irregular ones like "ir," "vir," "sair," "cair," "rir," and "produzir," a table of the 30 most common "-ir" verbs with their meanings, the mistakes English speakers make over and over, pronunciation notes for the sounds that don't exist in English, and practice exercises with an answer key at the end so you can check your own work.

If you've already looked at whether Portuguese is hard to learn, you know the subjunctive mood is one of the two things that consistently trips up English speakers, and "-ir" verbs are where the subjunctive shows up constantly in real speech. So this is worth getting right early, before the bad habits set in.

One honest note before you dive in: reading conjugation tables will get you to recognize these verbs. It won't get you to produce them on the spot, in a real sentence, at conversation speed. That only comes from saying them out loud, over and over, until your mouth does the work without your brain running a grammar chart in the background. Comigo builds its Brazilian Portuguese lessons around exactly that: you hear a line, you say it back out loud, and you get instant feedback on what you actually said, not just what you tapped. Keep that in your back pocket. For now, let's get into the grammar.

What Are -IR Verbs in Portuguese?

Portuguese verbs fall into three regular conjugation groups, sorted by the last two letters of the infinitive: "-ar" (falar, morar, estudar), "-er" (comer, beber, aprender), and "-ir" (partir, abrir, decidir). Every verb in the language, when you strip away the ending, is trying to fit one of these three molds, or it's irregular enough to need its own rules.

"-ir" verbs are the smallest of the three groups. The Wiktionary category for Portuguese verbs ending in "-ir" lists several hundred entries, a fraction of the thousands of "-ar" verbs that dominate the language (almost every new verb coined in Portuguese, from "deletar" to "printar," gets an "-ar" ending). But small doesn't mean unimportant. "Ir" (to go), "vir" (to come), "sair" (to leave), "pedir" (to ask for), "sentir" (to feel), and "seguir" (to follow) are all "-ir" verbs, and they're some of the most frequently used verbs in everyday Brazilian Portuguese. You cannot hold a five-minute conversation without at least three of them.

The linguistic classification calls this the third conjugation, a label Portuguese inherited from Vulgar Latin along with the rest of its verb system, shared in spirit (though not in exact form) with other Romance languages like Spanish, Italian, and French. If you've studied any of those, the three-way split between "-ar," "-er," and "-ir" verbs (or their equivalents) will feel familiar. If Portuguese is your first Romance language, just remember: three endings, three patterns, and everything else in verb conjugation builds from there.

Here's the good news about "-ir" verbs specifically: the regular pattern is genuinely regular, more predictable in some tenses than "-er" verbs are. The bad news: "-ir" verbs produce more stem-changing exceptions than the other two groups combined, and several of the most common verbs in the language, including "ir" itself, are fully irregular. That combination, mostly-regular grammar with some of the highest-frequency irregular verbs, is exactly why this group deserves its own deep dive instead of a quick footnote.

How to Conjugate Regular -IR Verbs in the Present Tense

Start with the model verb: "partir" (to leave, to depart). Strip the "-ir" and you get the stem "part-." Add these endings for the present tense (presente do indicativo):

Now check that pattern against two more common regular "-ir" verbs, "abrir" (to open) and "decidir" (to decide), side by side:

Same endings, every time: -o, -es, -e, -imos, -is, -em. Practice Portuguese lays out this exact rule: the only place "-ir" verbs differ from "-er" verbs in the present tense is the "nós" form, where "-er" verbs take "-emos" (comemos) and "-ir" verbs take "-imos" (partimos). That's the single detail to lock in if you've already learned "-er" verbs and want to build on that foundation instead of starting from zero.

A quick note on "abrir": the present tense is completely regular, but its past participle is not. Hold that thought, it comes back in the gerund and participle section below, because it's one of the classic exceptions English speakers get wrong for months without realizing it.

Regular -IR Verbs in the Past: Pretérito Perfeito and Imperfeito

Portuguese has two simple past tenses that English collapses into one word: "I left." Pretérito perfeito describes a completed action, something that happened and ended: "Eu parti ontem" (I left yesterday). Pretérito imperfeito describes a repeated, ongoing, or background action: "Eu partia todos os domingos" (I used to leave every Sunday). Mixing these up is one of the most common grammar mistakes English speakers make in Portuguese, so let's get both tables on the page.

Pretérito perfeito (simple past, completed action):

Notice that "nós partimos" looks identical in the present and the pretérito perfeito. Context (and usually a time word like "ontem," or "yesterday," which you can review in the days of the week post) tells you which one you're hearing.

Pretérito imperfeito (used to / was doing, ongoing or habitual past):

The imperfeito is the easiest tense in the entire Portuguese verb system, because "-er" and "-ir" verbs share the exact same endings (-ia, -ias, -ia, -íamos, -íeis, -iam) with almost no irregular verbs to worry about. Learn it once for "comer," and you already know it for "partir."

The Future and Conditional of Regular -IR Verbs

Here's a piece of good news that surprises a lot of learners: Portuguese has one of the simplest future tense formations of any Romance language. You take the full infinitive, unchanged, and add a short ending. No stem to identify, no irregular root, just the verb as written plus a suffix.

Futuro do presente (simple future, "will"):

Condicional (would):

These endings, -ei/-ás/-á/-emos/-eis/-ão for the future and -ia/-ias/-ia/-íamos/-íeis/-iam for the conditional, are identical across all three conjugation groups (-ar, -er, -ir). Once you know them for one group, you know them for all three. That's rare in Portuguese grammar, so enjoy the break.

There's a catch, though, and it's an important one for real spoken Brazilian Portuguese: almost nobody uses "partirei" in casual conversation. Brazilians overwhelmingly reach for "vou partir" instead (the "ir + infinitive" construction covered in its own section below), the same way English speakers say "I'm going to leave" far more often than "I shall leave." You'll see the synthetic future in writing, in formal speech, and in the news. In a bar with friends, you'll hear the periphrastic version almost every time.

The Subjunctive Mood for -IR Verbs

If you've read anything about why Portuguese has a reputation for being harder than its FSI difficulty ranking suggests, the subjunctive mood is usually the culprit. English barely has a living subjunctive mood anymore (it survives in fossilized phrases like "if I were you"), so Portuguese asking you to actively conjugate for doubt, wish, and hypothetical situations feels foreign at first. Once you see the pattern for "-ir" verbs, though, it stops feeling random.

Presente do subjuntivo (present subjunctive): used after expressions of doubt, wish, emotion, or a recommendation, usually triggered by "que." Take the "eu" form of the present indicative, drop the final "-o," and add the opposite vowel set.

Example: "Espero que você decida logo" (I hope you decide soon). "Quero que ela abra a porta" (I want her to open the door).

Imperfeito do subjuntivo (past subjunctive): used for hypothetical or doubtful situations in the past, and in "se" (if) clauses. Formed from the "eles" form of the pretérito perfeito, minus "-ram," plus -sse, -sses, -sse, -ssemos, -sseis, -ssem.

Example: "Se eu partisse agora, chegaria a tempo" (If I left now, I'd arrive in time).

Futuro do subjuntivo (future subjunctive): a tense English genuinely doesn't have an equivalent for. It's used after "se" (if), "quando" (when), and "assim que" (as soon as) when talking about a future condition. Same root as the imperfeito subjuntivo, but with -r, -res, -r, -rmos, -rdes, -rem.

Example: "Quando você decidir, me avise" (When you decide, let me know). Notice how the "eu" and "ele" forms of the future subjunctive look exactly like the infinitive. That's a real, common source of confusion, and even some native speakers write it wrong in casual texting.

The Imperative, Gerúndio, and Particípio of -IR Verbs

The imperative mood gives commands. Portuguese, like most Romance languages, has separate affirmative and negative imperative forms, and the negative form borrows straight from the subjunctive.

For "abrir": "Abre a janela!" (Open the window, informal tu) or "Abra a porta, por favor" (Open the door, please, using você), a good moment to connect back to how you'd phrase please in Portuguese when you're softening a command into a request.

Gerúndio (the "-ing" form, used with "estar" for ongoing actions): drop the "-ir" and add "-indo." Partir becomes "partindo," abrir becomes "abrindo," decidir becomes "decidindo." "Estou decidindo o que fazer" means "I'm deciding what to do."

Particípio (past participle, used with "ter" and "haver" for compound tenses, and with "ser" for the passive voice): this is where the exceptions live. Regular "-ir" verbs just add "-ido": partir becomes "partido," decidir becomes "decidido." But a handful of extremely common "-ir" verbs have irregular participles that you simply have to memorize, because they show up constantly.

"Aberto" and "coberto" are two of the first irregular participles every Portuguese textbook drills, because "a porta está aberta" (the door is open) and "a mesa está coberta" (the table is covered) are sentences you'll use in your first month of speaking practice.

Stem-Changing -IR Verbs: When Regular Rules Bend

This is where "-ir" verbs earn their reputation. A large group of common verbs look irregular at first glance but actually follow one of two very reliable patterns: the stem vowel shifts, but only in the "eu" form of the present indicative (and, as a direct consequence, throughout the present subjunctive, which is built from that same "eu" form). Every other person keeps the original vowel. This is a present-tense-only phenomenon. In the pretérito perfeito, these verbs go back to being completely regular.

Pattern 1: e becomes i (sentir, servir, vestir, preferir, repetir)

Elon.io's grammar notes explain the mechanism simply: the "eu" form raises the stem vowel, and every other present-tense form leaves it alone. "Eu sinto saudade" (I feel longing, one of Portuguese's famously untranslatable words) uses "sinto," but "ela sente saudade" keeps the "e."

Pattern 2: o becomes u (dormir, cobrir, tossir, engolir)

"Eu durmo oito horas por noite" (I sleep eight hours a night) but "ela dorme pouco" (she sleeps little). Same rule as the previous group, just running "o to u" instead of "e to i." If you want to connect this back to something you already know, "dormir bem" (sleeping well) is the exact wish tucked inside saying goodnight in Portuguese: "boa noite" carries the implicit hope that the other person sleeps well.

Pattern 3: gu-stem verbs with a spelling twist (seguir, conseguir)

"Seguir" (to follow) combines the e-to-i shift with a spelling adjustment: the "gu" becomes a plain "g" before the "o" ending, because Portuguese spelling rules don't allow "guo."

If you use social media in Brazil, you already know "seguir": "Eu sigo você" means "I follow you," and it's exactly the verb behind every Instagram follow button. It's also the verb you'd use for something you'll want if you connect with a friend in Portuguese online before meeting in person.

Pattern 4: the reverse case (subir, fugir)

"Subir" (to go up, to climb) and "fugir" (to flee) do something that looks backwards compared to the patterns above: the "eu" form keeps the closed vowel, while every other present-tense form opens it.

Notice the consonant shift too: "fujo" uses "j" instead of "g" for the same spelling reason as "sigo," Portuguese keeps the soft "zh" sound consistent before every vowel.

Pattern 5: d becomes ç (pedir, medir, despedir)

"Pedir" (to ask for, to order) is one of the most useful verbs in the entire language, and its irregularity is a genuine surprise the first time you meet it.

You'll use "pedir" constantly: "Vou pedir uma água" (I'm going to order [ask for] water, a phrase worth pairing with the full breakdown of water in Portuguese), "posso pedir um favor?" (can I ask a favor?), or ordering a beer or a glass of wine at a bar: "Vou pedir uma cerveja." It's also the verb hiding behind a polite request, which connects directly to how please works in Portuguese and how thank you closes the loop once your order arrives.

Pattern 6: the lone consonant-insertion verb (ouvir)

"Ouvir" (to hear, to listen) doesn't fit neatly into the patterns above. It inserts a "ç" sound in the "eu" form and otherwise conjugates like a regular "-ir" verb.

"Eu não ouço bem" (I don't hear well) versus "ela ouve música" (she listens to music). CoolJugator's conjugation table for ouvir is worth bookmarking if this one doesn't stick on the first pass, since it's an outlier even among the other stem-changers.

Irregular -IR Verbs You Have to Just Memorize

Beyond the stem-changers, a handful of "-ir" verbs are irregular enough that pattern-matching won't save you. You have to learn them as their own small system. The good news: most of them are so common that you'll absorb them fast just from hearing Portuguese spoken around you.

Vir (to come)

"Vir" shares a lot of its irregular skeleton with "ter" (to have), which makes it slightly easier to hold onto once you've learned one of the two.

Careful with "nós vimos": in the present tense it means "we come," but the identical spelling in the pretérito perfeito of "ver" (to see) also reads "vimos," meaning "we saw." Context and the accent on "vêm" (they come, with a circumflex, versus "vem," he/she comes, without one) are the two details native speakers rely on to keep these apart.

Sair (to leave, to go out)

"Sair" is the verb behind going out with friends and dating culture in Brazil: "Vamos sair hoje à noite?" (Should we go out tonight?), or, in the context of a budding relationship, "eles estão saindo" (they're seeing each other, dating). It's the verb underneath a lot of the vocabulary in the friendship in Portuguese post, and it shows up again if you're navigating the early stages of calling someone your girlfriend in Portuguese: "saímos algumas vezes" (we went out a few times) is exactly how that conversation starts.

Cair (to fall)

"Cair" conjugates almost identically to "sair," down to the accent marks that keep the vowels from blending together (caí, not "cai" with one syllable, which is why you'll see that accent mark constantly on this verb).

Rir (to laugh)

"Rir" is short and irregular in a way that catches people off guard, mostly because "eu rio" (I laugh) looks exactly like the name of the city Rio (as in Rio de Janeiro) written lowercase. Only context tells them apart. "Sorrir" (to smile) conjugates the same way, one syllable longer: "eu sorrio," "ela sorri."

Produzir and the -zir family (traduzir, reduzir, conduzir)

Verbs ending in "-zir" follow the regular "-ir" pattern almost perfectly, with one specific, consistent exception: the "ele/ela/você" form of the present tense drops the final "-e."

Compare "ele produz" (not "produze") to the fully regular "ele decide." That missing final vowel is the whole irregularity, and it repeats identically for "reduzir" (to reduce) and "conduzir" (to drive, to conduct).

The Verb Ir Itself: How to Say "To Go" in Portuguese

"Ir" is the single most irregular verb in this entire post, and also one of the most useful words in the language. It shares its pretérito perfeito, word for word, with "ser" (to be), which is a genuinely strange fact of Portuguese grammar that trips up even advanced learners: "fui" can mean either "I went" or "I was," and only context tells you which. The full ser conjugation in Portuguese guide shows how to tell them apart.

A few things worth flagging. First, "vou," "vai," and "vamos" are some of the highest-frequency words in spoken Brazilian Portuguese, precisely because of the construction in the next section. Second, the imperative of "ir" borrows straight from the forms above: "vai!" (go, informal), "vá!" (go, formal), "vamos!" (let's go, arguably the single most common command in the language, used constantly even when nobody's literally going anywhere, the way English speakers say "come on"). Third, that shared pretérito with "ser" isn't a coincidence or a typo, it's a genuine historical fusion the two verbs underwent centuries ago, and Ciberdúvidas da Língua Portuguesa, a respected Portuguese-language grammar reference, has written at length about the archaic "vós" forms like "ides" and "vades" that survive in this verb even though they've mostly disappeared from everyday Brazilian speech.

If a full table of "ir" still feels abstract, CoolJugator's conjugation page lets you click through every tense at once, which is a good way to drill the shape of this verb until it stops feeling like six unrelated words wearing the same infinitive.

Ir + Infinitive: The Easiest Way to Talk About the Future

Here's the payoff for learning "ir" so thoroughly: once you have the present tense down, you already have the most common way Brazilians talk about the future, full stop. Just like English says "I'm going to eat" far more often than "I shall eat," Portuguese reaches for "ir" (conjugated in the present) plus an infinitive, instead of the synthetic future tense you saw a few sections back.

Notice that the main verb ("comer," "estudar," "viajar," "decidir") never changes. It stays in the infinitive no matter who's doing the action. All the conjugation work happens on "ir," which is exactly why this construction is so much friendlier for beginners than the synthetic future you learned earlier: you're reusing a verb you already know instead of memorizing a brand-new set of endings for every verb you want to talk about in the future tense.

This construction is everywhere in real Brazilian speech: making weekend plans, talking about what you'll do for New Year's, or planning a trip if you're working toward actually going to learn Brazilian Portuguese in Brazil. If your goal is to sound like a real person and not a textbook, lean on "vou," "vai," and "vamos" hard, and save the synthetic future for writing and formal contexts. It's the single highest-leverage grammar shortcut in this entire post: one irregular verb, conjugated correctly, unlocks the future tense of every other verb you know.

European Portuguese vs Brazilian Portuguese: Tu and Vós

Everything above uses the six traditional grammatical persons, including "tu" and "vós," because that's the standard way conjugation tables are taught and because you'll run into both forms in songs, books, and if you spend time in Portugal. But the way they're actually used splits sharply between Brazil and Portugal, and it's worth being honest about that split before you decide how hard to drill these forms.

In European Portuguese, "tu" is alive and well as the everyday informal "you," conjugated with the "-es"/"-es" endings shown throughout this post (partes, comes, decides). "Vós," the plural "you all," is a different story: it's essentially extinct in spoken European Portuguese too, replaced almost everywhere by "vocês," though you'll still meet it in prayers, older literature, and some regional dialects.

In Brazilian Portuguese, "tu" survives strongly in some regions (much of the South and parts of the Northeast) but has mostly been replaced by "você" nationally, conjugated as if it were a third-person pronoun, meaning it takes the same verb form as "ele/ela": "você parte," not "você partes." This is a genuinely useful simplification for learners focused on Brazilian Portuguese: you can often get away with only actively producing four of the six forms (eu, você/ele/ela, nós, vocês/eles/elas) and simply recognizing "tu" and "vós" when you read or hear them. If you're headed to Portugal specifically, flip that priority: the happy birthday in Portugal Portuguese guide covers the "tu"-form grammar you'll actually need there in more detail, since European Portuguese leans on it far more than Brazilian speech does.

30 of the Most Common -IR Verbs in Portuguese

Here's a working list to build vocabulary from, sorted roughly by how often you'll actually hear each verb in conversation. The "eu" form is included because that's the form most likely to surprise you if the verb is a stem-changer or fully irregular.

If you're building study lists, group these by type (regular, stem-changing, irregular) rather than alphabetically. It's a far more efficient way to review, since you're reinforcing the pattern instead of thirty disconnected words.

Mistakes English Speakers Make with -IR Verbs

A few errors show up over and over, almost predictably, because they come from English habits leaking into Portuguese sentence structure.

Applying the stem change to every form. Once learners discover "durmo" or "sinto," a common overcorrection is saying "nós durmimos" or "eles sintem" instead of the correct "nós dormimos" and "eles sentem." Remember: the vowel change is an "eu"-form-only phenomenon (and, by extension, the present subjunctive, which is built from it). Every other present-tense form keeps the original infinitive vowel.

Confusing pretérito perfeito and imperfeito. English "I used to sleep at my parents' house" and "I slept at my parents' house last night" use the same verb form, "slept," and rely entirely on context words to signal the difference. Portuguese forces the distinction into the verb itself: "eu dormia" (used to sleep, imperfeito) versus "eu dormi" (slept, on one occasion, pretérito perfeito). Translate the meaning, not the English verb form.

Forgetting the future subjunctive after "se," "quando," and "assim que." English uses the present tense after these words when talking about the future ("when you decide, tell me"), but Portuguese requires the future subjunctive: "quando você decidir, me avise," not "quando você decide." This is one of the most persistent errors intermediate learners make, because English genuinely has no equivalent tense to translate from.

Treating "ir" and "vir" as interchangeable. Both can loosely mean "to go" or "to come" in English depending on the sentence, but Portuguese is stricter: "ir" moves away from the speaker's point of reference, "vir" moves toward it. "Vou à sua casa" (I'm going to your place, moving toward you, so from the speaker's side it's "ir") versus "Venha à minha casa" (come to my place, moving toward the speaker, so it's "vir"). English speakers default to "ir" out of habit even when the sentence clearly calls for "vir."

Skipping the accent marks on "-air" and "-uir" verbs. "Sair," "cair," "construir," and their relatives rely on written accents (saí, caí, construí) to mark that two vowels are pronounced as separate syllables instead of blending into a diphthong. Drop the accent in writing and you've technically written a different, often nonexistent word.

Overusing "eu vou" as a filler the way English uses "I will." Because "vou" is so common in the "ir + infinitive" construction, some learners start every future sentence with it out of habit, even in formal writing where the synthetic future ("decidirei," "partirei") would read more naturally, similar to how "I will" sounds more formal in English writing than "I'm gonna."

Pronunciation: How to Say -IR Verbs Correctly

A few pronunciation quirks are specific to this verb group and worth knowing before you start practicing out loud.

The final "-em" and "-am" are nasal, not "em" the way English reads it. Third-person plural forms like "partem," "decidem," and "vêm" end in a nasal diphthong, roughly the sound English speakers make in the middle of "sing," not a clean "em" like the end of "item." Portuguese phonology has an entire, well-documented set of nasal vowels and diphthongs that don't exist in English at all, and verb endings are one of the places you'll meet them most often.

Brazilian Portuguese palatalizes "t" and "d" before "i." This is a defining feature of Brazilian pronunciation, and it hits "-ir" verbs constantly, since so many forms end in an unstressed "i" sound. "Parti" (I left) is pronounced closer to "par-CHEE," with the "t" softening into something between "t" and "ch." "Decidi" leans toward "deh-see-DJEE," with the "d" softening the same way before that final "i." European Portuguese does not do this, which is one of the clearest ear-tests for telling the two accents apart.

"Ouvir" hides a consonant your eyes don't expect. The written form has no "ç" in the infinitive, but "ouço" needs it to keep the "s" sound before "o." Say it as "OH-soo," not "OH-voo," a mistake that comes from reading the infinitive too literally.

Stress almost always falls on the final syllable in the infinitive and the future tense. "PartIR," "abrIR," "decidIR," and later "partirEI," "abrirÁ" all carry the stress at the end, unlike English, where stress on Latin-derived verbs tends to drift toward the middle of the word. Getting this stress placement right does more for sounding natural than almost any other single pronunciation fix, and it's the kind of habit that only sets in with repeated, out-loud practice rather than silent reading, which is the whole design behind speaking-first tools like Comigo.

Practice Exercises: Test Your -IR Verb Conjugation

Conjugate the verb in parentheses into the tense indicated by the context. Answers follow immediately after.

Answer key: 1. durmo. 2. partimos. 3. saía. 4. virá (or "vai vir" in everyday speech). 5. decidisse. 6. conseguir. 7. peço. 8. seguem. 9. vamos. 10. riu. 11. abre. 12. ouço.

If you got eight or more right without peeking, you've genuinely internalized the core patterns in this post. If you got fewer, don't worry, that's completely normal on a first pass through this much material. Go back to the section that tripped you up, read the table out loud a few times (out loud matters more than it sounds like it should), and try the exercises again in a day or two.

Where to Go From Here

You now have the full map: the regular "-ir" pattern across every tense that matters, the stem-changers grouped by their actual mechanism instead of memorized one by one, the fully irregular verbs that carry a huge share of everyday conversation, the "ir + infinitive" shortcut that native speakers reach for constantly, a European-versus-Brazilian note on "tu" and "vós," 30 of the most common verbs in one table, the mistakes to watch for, and pronunciation details that no textbook chart shows you on the page.

The gap between knowing this and using this, without pausing to think through a conjugation table mid-sentence, only closes one way: real, repeated, spoken practice. That's the entire premise behind Comigo, a Brazilian Portuguese course built around speaking out loud from your very first lesson, with a companion who checks what you actually said instead of what you tapped on a screen. Reading tables gets you recognition. Saying "eu vou," "eu sinto," and "eu peço" out loud, in real sentences, over and over, is what gets you fluency. Both matter. Only one of them is optional forever if you never start.