Faire Conjugation: All Tenses of the French Verb “faire”
Written by Camille Laurent, Lead French Curriculum Editor · Reviewed August 2026
Faire covers both “to do” and “to make,” and it stretches much further than either: French uses it for the weather, for sports and hobbies, for chores, and for making someone else do something.
Faire is one of the first verbs you need and one of the last you finish learning. It answers the basic question qu'est-ce que tu fais ?, it builds the weather (il fait froid), and it names most activities: faire du sport, faire la cuisine, faire les courses. It also has a causative use — faire réparer la voiture means having the car repaired, not repairing it yourself. Because so many everyday phrases are built on it, faire earns more return per hour of study than almost any other verb.
Faire is irregular in the present and keeps two surprises in the plural: vous faites, not the expected vous faisez, and ils font, one of only four verbs ending in -ont. The nous form is spelled faisons but pronounced as if it were written fesons, and that same hidden vowel runs through the whole imperfect (je faisais, nous faisions) and the present participle faisant. The future and conditional shrink the stem to fer- (je ferai, je ferais), and the subjunctive replaces it entirely with fass- (que je fasse, que nous fassions). The past participle is fait.
Faire in context
Présent
Qu'est-ce que vous faites ce week-end ? What are you doing this weekend?
Imparfait
Le samedi, on faisait le marché tous les deux. On Saturdays, the two of us used to do the market shopping.
Passé composé
J'ai fait une erreur dans le formulaire. I made a mistake on the form.
Futur simple
Nous ferons les courses demain matin. We'll do the shopping tomorrow morning.
Subjonctif présent
Il faut que tu fasses attention à la marche. You need to watch out for the step.
Common mistakes with faire
Regularising vous faites
✗ Vous faisez du bruit.
✓ Vous faites du bruit. — You're making noise.
Only three verbs take -tes in the vous form: vous êtes, vous dites, vous faites. Everything else in the present takes -ez, which is why the wrong form feels so natural to build.
Using être for the weather
✗ Aujourd'hui il est froid.
✓ Aujourd'hui il fait froid. — It's cold today.
French describes weather with faire, not être: il fait chaud, il fait beau, il fait du vent. Il est froid would be understood as a comment on an object or a person's temperament.
Indicative after il faut que
✗ Il faut que je fais mes devoirs.
✓ Il faut que je fasse mes devoirs. — I have to do my homework.
Il faut que triggers the subjunctive, and faire's subjunctive stem is fass-, which shares nothing with the present. Because the phrase is so common, this is the error that most often gives a learner away in writing.
Expressions with faire
faire attention
to pay attention, to be careful
faire la queue
to queue, to stand in line
faire semblant de
to pretend to
faire partie de
to be part of
ça fait longtemps
it's been a long time
faire les courses
to do the grocery shopping
Frequently asked questions
Is faire a regular verb?
No. Faire belongs to the third group and is irregular in nearly every tense. The present has two forms you cannot predict (vous faites, ils font), the future uses the short stem fer-, and the subjunctive uses fass-. Its compounds — refaire, défaire, satisfaire — follow the same pattern.
What is the past participle of faire?
The past participle is fait, so the passé composé is j'ai fait. It agrees like any avoir participle when a direct object comes first: la tarte que j'ai faite. The one exception is faire followed by an infinitive, where fait stays invariable: la voiture qu'il a fait réparer.
When do you use faire instead of rendre?
Faire covers doing and making things: faire un gâteau, faire ses devoirs. When you mean making someone feel a certain way, French switches to rendre plus an adjective: cette nouvelle m'a rendu heureux, not m'a fait heureux. Faire keeps the causative sense with a verb: ça m'a fait rire.
How do you talk about the weather with faire?
Use the impersonal il fait plus an adjective or a noun: il fait beau, il fait chaud, il fait moins dix, il fait du vent. In the past you will usually hear the imperfect, il faisait beau, because weather is background description rather than a single completed event.
How do you pronounce nous faisons?
The ai in faisons is pronounced like the e in le, so it sounds closer to fesons than to faisons. The same applies to the whole imperfect (je faisais, ils faisaient) and to faisant. Elsewhere in the verb, ai keeps its normal sound: je fais and il fait rhyme with mais.