Avoir Conjugation: All Tenses of the French Verb “avoir”
Written by Camille Laurent, Lead French Curriculum Editor · Reviewed August 2026
Avoir means “to have,” and it is the most-used verb in French. It carries its own meaning — possession, age, sensations — and it is also the auxiliary that builds the past tense of almost every other verb.
You cannot get far in French without avoir. Beyond “I have a car,” it is the verb French reaches for where English uses “to be”: you don't say you are twenty, you say you have twenty years. And because avoir is the auxiliary in the passé composé for the large majority of verbs, every past-tense sentence you build will run through this table. Learn it early and the rest of the tense system gets much cheaper.
Avoir is irregular in the ways that matter most, and the present tense is where it looks least like its infinitive: j'ai, tu as, il a, nous avons, vous avez, ils ont. There is no stem you can extract and reuse. The future and conditional both build on the stem aur- (j'aurai, j'aurais), and the subjunctive is its own shape again (que j'aie, que nous ayons). The past participle is eu, which is spelled with two vowels but pronounced as a single sound, roughly like the u in tu.
Avoir is its own auxiliary: the passé composé is j'ai eu, not je suis eu. It is also the auxiliary for most other French verbs, which is why this table does double duty.
Avoir in context
Présent
J'ai deux frères et une sœur. I have two brothers and one sister.
Imparfait
Quand j'étais petit, j'avais peur du noir. When I was little, I was afraid of the dark.
Passé composé
Nous avons eu un problème avec la réservation. We had a problem with the booking.
Futur simple
Tu auras bientôt vingt ans. You'll be twenty soon.
Subjonctif présent
Il faut que j'aie mon passeport sur moi. I need to have my passport on me.
Common mistakes with avoir
Using être for age, hunger, and fear
✗ Je suis vingt ans.
✓ J'ai vingt ans. — I'm twenty years old.
English treats age as something you are; French treats it as something you have. The same goes for j'ai faim (I'm hungry), j'ai froid (I'm cold), and j'ai peur (I'm scared). Translating “I am” literally is the single most common avoir mistake.
Writing ai where the subjunctive needs aie
✗ Il faut que j'ai le temps.
✓ Il faut que j'aie le temps. — I need to have time.
Il faut que triggers the subjunctive, and avoir's subjunctive is irregular: que j'aie, que tu aies, qu'il ait. The two forms sound identical in speech, so this error is almost invisible until you write it down.
Using être as avoir's auxiliary
✗ Je suis eu de la chance.
✓ J'ai eu de la chance. — I was lucky.
Avoir takes itself as its auxiliary. Learners who have just met the être-verb list sometimes over-apply it; avoir is not on that list.
Expressions with avoir
avoir faim / soif
to be hungry / thirsty
avoir raison / tort
to be right / wrong
avoir besoin de
to need
avoir envie de
to feel like, to want
avoir l'air
to seem, to look
il y a
there is / there are
Frequently asked questions
Is avoir a regular verb?
No. Avoir is one of the most irregular verbs in French. Its present tense (j'ai, tu as, il a, nous avons, vous avez, ils ont) cannot be predicted from the infinitive, and its future stem (aur-) and subjunctive (que j'aie) are irregular too. It has to be memorised rather than derived.
What is the past participle of avoir?
The past participle is eu, so the passé composé is j'ai eu. It is spelled with two vowels but pronounced as one sound, close to the u in tu — the e is silent.
When do you use avoir instead of être?
Use avoir for possession (j'ai une voiture), for age (j'ai trente ans), and for physical and emotional states that English expresses with “to be”: avoir faim, avoir froid, avoir peur, avoir sommeil. Use être for identity, description, and location.
Why is avoir called an auxiliary verb?
Because it combines with a past participle to build compound tenses for other verbs: j'ai mangé, j'ai fini, j'ai pris. Most French verbs use avoir as their auxiliary; a small set of movement and change-of-state verbs, plus all reflexives, use être instead.
How do you say “there is” in French?
With il y a, which is built from avoir. It stays in the third person singular whether what follows is singular or plural: il y a un problème, il y a trois problèmes. In the past it becomes il y avait or il y a eu.