Haben Conjugation: All Tenses, Explained Simply (with Examples)

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Haben means “to have”, but it does far more than sit in that one box. It's the main auxiliary verb that builds the German past tense, the Perfekt, the one Germans reach for every single day to talk about anything that already happened. Learn haben properly and you're picking up much more than one useful verb. You're opening the door to talking about the past with almost every other verb in the language.

Don't worry, by the end of this guide you'll have every tense of haben laid out in clean tables, with example sentences for each, plus a clear sense of when German reaches for haben and when it reaches for its partner, sein. But first, the hack that saves you weeks of work.

The Haben Conjugation Hack: Learn These First

Here's the honest truth about conjugation tables: you don't need to memorise every tense before you can use haben in real conversation. Native-sounding beginners lean on a small handful of forms.

If you learn nothing else today, learn the present tense (Präsens) of haben by heart:

• ich habe (“I have”), du hast (“you have”), er/sie/es hat (“he/she/it has”), wir haben (“we have”), ihr habt (“you all have”), sie/Sie haben (“they/you formal have”)

Notice something odd in the middle two forms: du hast and er/sie/es hat drop the -b- that's sitting right there in the infinitive. Nearly every beginner tries “habst” and “habt” first, purely by analogy with regular verbs, and gets corrected. Drill that dropped -b- now and you'll save yourself months of small stumbles.

That row of six words already carries you through possession, most everyday idioms, and (once you add the participle gehabt) the whole Perfekt tense. Right, now let's build the full picture.

Haben at a Glance

Infinitiv	haben
Partizip II	gehabt
Perfekt auxiliary	haben (it's its own auxiliary)
Verb type	irregular
English meaning	“to have”

A quick note on the pronouns I'll use in every table:

German	English
ich	I
du	you (informal singular)
er / sie / es	he / she / it
wir	we
ihr	you all (informal plural)
sie / Sie	they / you (formal)

Haben Conjugation: Simple Tenses

German only has two simple (one-word) tenses, and haben is essential in both:

Pronoun	Präsens	Präteritum
ich	habe	hatte
du	hast	hattest
er/sie/es	hat	hatte
wir	haben	hatten
ihr	habt	hattet
sie/Sie	haben	hatten

And here's each in action:

• Präsens – Ich habe einen Hund. – “I have a dog.”
• Präteritum (the written/narrative past, but also the everyday spoken past for haben itself) – Ich hatte gestern keine Zeit. – “I didn't have time yesterday.”

Haben Conjugation: Compound Tenses

Every compound tense of every German verb is built by pairing haben (or sein) with a participle or infinitive. Learn haben‘s own compound forms here and you'll recognise the pattern everywhere else in the language.

Pronoun	Perfekt	Plusquamperfekt	Futur I	Futur II
ich	habe gehabt	hatte gehabt	werde haben	werde gehabt haben
du	hast gehabt	hattest gehabt	wirst haben	wirst gehabt haben
er/sie/es	hat gehabt	hatte gehabt	wird haben	wird gehabt haben
wir	haben gehabt	hatten gehabt	werden haben	werden gehabt haben
ihr	habt gehabt	hattet gehabt	werdet haben	werdet gehabt haben
sie/Sie	haben gehabt	hatten gehabt	werden haben	werden gehabt haben

• Perfekt – Ich habe schon einmal einen Unfall gehabt. – “I've had an accident once before.”
• Plusquamperfekt – Bevor er die Stelle bekam, hatte er noch nie einen Job gehabt. – “Before he got the job, he had never had a job before.”
• Futur I – Nächstes Jahr werde ich mehr Zeit haben. – “Next year I'll have more time.”
• Futur II – Er wird wohl keine Wahl gehabt haben. – “He probably had no choice.” (Futur II is used far more often for guessing about the past than for strict “future perfect” meaning, this is a very typical way to see it in the wild.)

(One quirk: in everyday speech, Germans normally say ich hatte rather than ich habe gehabt, even though the Perfekt is the default spoken past for almost every other verb. Haben and sein are the two exceptions that stick with the simple Präteritum in conversation.)

Haben Conjugation: Konjunktiv Mood

The Konjunktiv is German's mood for hypotheticals, wishes, and reported speech. With haben, you'll use one of these forms constantly.

Pronoun	Konjunktiv II	Konjunktiv I
ich	hätte	habe
du	hättest	habest
er/sie/es	hätte	habe
wir	hätten	haben
ihr	hättet	habet
sie/Sie	hätten	haben

Konjunktiv II is the one you'll actually use day to day. It covers “would have”, polite requests, and wishes:

• Ich hätte gern einen Kaffee. – “I'd like a coffee.” (This is the single most useful phrase on this whole page, it's how you politely order or ask for almost anything in German.)
• Wenn ich Zeit hätte, würde ich mitkommen. – “If I had time, I'd come along.”

Konjunktiv I is quieter, it mostly appears in reported speech, especially in news writing and formal contexts:

• Er sagte, er habe keine Zeit. – “He said (that) he had no time.”

Haben Conjugation: Imperativ (Commands)

Telling someone to “have” something (patience, courage, no fear) uses the imperative.

Pronoun	Imperativ
du	hab(e)
wir	haben wir
ihr	habt
Sie	haben Sie

The du form can be hab or habe, both are correct, but hab is what you'll actually hear in speech.

• Hab keine Angst! – “Don't be afraid!” (literally, “have no fear!”)
• Habt Geduld! – “Be patient!”

When to Use Haben

Haben covers three separate jobs, and mixing them up is where learners trip.

1. Literal possession. The straightforward meaning: Ich habe ein Auto. (“I have a car.”) This is the one that needs no explanation.

2. The dominant Perfekt auxiliary. Most German verbs build their Perfekt with haben, not sein: ich habe gegessen (“I have eaten”), ich habe gesehen (“I have seen”). The exception is verbs of motion or change of state, walking, driving, becoming, waking up, which take sein instead: ich bin gegangen (“I went”), ich bin gefahren (“I drove”). If in doubt, default to haben, it's right for the large majority of verbs.

3. Idioms where English says “to be” but German says “to have”. This trips up loads of learners, because English, Spanish, and French all handle these differently. In German, all of the following use haben:

• Hunger haben – to be hungry (Ich habe Hunger.)
• Durst haben – to be thirsty (Ich habe Durst.)
• Angst haben – to be afraid (Sie hat Angst vor Spinnen.)
• recht haben – to be right (Du hast recht.)
• Geduld haben – to be patient (Habt Geduld!)

One important contrast worth memorising the other way round: German age uses sein, not haben. Ich bin 25 Jahre alt (“I am 25 years old”) uses “to be”, exactly like English, even though French (avoir 25 ans) and Spanish (tener 25 años) both use “to have” for age. If you're coming from either of those languages, this is the one place your instinct will actively work against you.

And don't forget the polite ordering phrase from above: ich hätte gern… (“I'd like…”) is one of the most useful things you can say in a café, a shop, or a restaurant anywhere in the German-speaking world.

Why Is Haben Irregular?

Two separate irregularities are stacked on top of each other here, and it helps to see them as two different problems.

The first is the Präsens contraction. The stem is hab-, so a regular verb would give you habst and habt for du and er/sie/es. Instead, German smoothed the -b- away over centuries of everyday use, leaving hast and hat. English did something almost identical to its own cognate verb: “have” becomes “has”, not “haves”, for exactly the same reason, high-frequency verbs wear down into shorter, easier shapes.

The second is the Präteritum and Partizip II. Hatte and gehabt both use the regular weak-verb dental suffix (-te, -t), the same pattern as machen → machte → gemacht. But in the Präteritum the stem itself changes shape, from hab- to hatt-, rather than staying put the way a fully regular weak verb would. Grammarians sometimes call verbs like this “mixed” verbs, the same small family that includes kennen (kannte, gekannt), bringen (brachte, gebracht), and wissen (wusste, gewusst). That mixed pattern is also why the Konjunktiv II form hätte gets an umlaut on top of the doubled -tt-, giving it a shape all of its own.

Common Mistakes with Haben

A few traps that catch nearly everyone:

• Saying “habst” or “habt” for du/er. As covered above, the correct forms are hast and hat, the -b- disappears. This is the single most common beginner error with this verb.
• Picking the wrong Perfekt auxiliary. Most verbs take haben, but motion and change-of-state verbs (gehen, fahren, kommen, aufstehen, werden) take sein instead. When the verb has a direct object, it's almost always haben.
• Mixing up hätte and hatte. They differ by a single umlaut but mean quite different things. Ich hatte kein Geld is a plain statement of fact (“I had no money”). Ich hätte kein Geld is hypothetical (“I would have no money”). Easy to type the wrong one, worth double-checking.

Haben Conjugation FAQ

Is haben regular or irregular? Irregular. The Präsens contracts (hast, hat instead of habst, habt), and while the Präteritum and Partizip II follow the regular weak-verb -t pattern, the Präteritum stem changes (hab- to hatt-), which is why it's sometimes classed as a “mixed” verb rather than a fully regular one.

What are the six present-tense forms of haben? Habe, hast, hat, haben, habt, haben, which is “I have, you have, he/she/it has, we have, you all have, they/you formal have.”

How do you conjugate haben in the past? The main spoken and written past tense is the Präteritum: hatte, hattest, hatte, hatten, hattet, hatten. There's also a Perfekt (habe gehabt), but Germans use it far less often for haben itself than for other verbs, the Präteritum hatte is what you'll actually hear in conversation.

When do you use haben vs sein as the Perfekt auxiliary? Haben is the default for the vast majority of verbs. Sein is reserved for verbs of motion (gehen, fahren) and change of state (werden, aufwachen), plus sein and bleiben themselves.

What does “ich hätte gern” mean? “I'd like.” It's the Konjunktiv II of haben and it's the standard polite way to order or ask for something in German, in a café, a shop, anywhere. Far softer than ich will (“I want”), which can sound blunt.

Jetzt Hast Du Haben Drauf!

Du hast das jetzt drauf is a bit of colloquial German for “you've got this down now”, and after all that, you genuinely have. You've got every tense of haben in front of you, an example for each, and a clear sense of when German reaches for haben and when it reaches for sein instead.

The fastest way to lock these in is to use them. Build a few of these forms into flashcards (we love Anki for exactly this), then start dropping ich hätte gern into real requests out loud. While you're building your foundations, our guide to German phrases is a great companion to this page. If you'd like to hear haben used naturally by native speakers, GermanPod101 is a solid listening resource.

But the tables were only ever the warm-up. The whole point of learning habe, hast and hat is to walk up to a real person and say something true, which is exactly what we get you doing from day one inside the Fluent in 3 Months Bootcamp. So go and have something to say in German. Hab keine Angst!