Querer Conjugation: All Tenses, Explained Simply (with Examples)
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Querer is one of those Spanish verbs you'll reach for constantly. It's how you ask for what you want, and it's how you tell someone you love them, the same word does both jobs. It's an e→ie stem-changing verb, which sounds fussy but is actually one of the more forgiving irregular patterns in Spanish once you've seen it a few times: quiero, quisiste, quería, querré, all recognisably the same verb, with a couple of well-worn irregular pockets.
Don't worry. By the end of this guide you'll have every tense of querer laid out in clean tables, with example sentences for each, plus the difference between te quiero and te amo that trips up almost every learner. But first, the hack that saves you weeks of work.
The Querer Conjugation Hack: Learn These First
Here's the honest truth about conjugation tables: you do not need to memorise all seventeen tenses before you can use querer in real conversation. Native-sounding beginners lean on a tiny handful of forms.
If you learn nothing else today, learn the present tense of querer by heart:
- quiero (“I want”), quieres (“you want”), quiere (“he/she/it wants”), queremos (“we want”), queréis (“you all want”), quieren (“they want”)
That single row of six words will carry you through ordering food, asking for what you need, and saying te quiero to someone who matters. Add the polite form quisiera (“I would like”) for asking nicely, and you've covered the vast majority of everyday speech. Everything below that is for rounding out your Spanish over time, not for blocking you today.
Right, now let's build the full picture.
Querer at a Glance
| Infinitive | querer |
| Gerund (-ing) | queriendo |
| Past participle | querido |
| Verb type | irregular (e→ie stem change) |
| English meaning | “to want”, “to love” |
A quick note on the pronouns I'll use in every table:
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| yo | I |
| tú | you (informal singular) |
| él / ella / usted | he / she / you (formal singular) |
| nosotros / nosotras | we |
| vosotros / vosotras | you all (informal, Spain) |
| ellos / ellas / ustedes | they / you all (formal) |
Querer Conjugation: Indicative Mood (Simple Tenses)
The indicative is the everyday, “stating facts” mood, and these five simple tenses are the backbone of querer. Here they all are in one place:
| Pronoun | Present | Preterite | Imperfect | Future | Conditional |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| yo | quiero | quise | quería | querré | querría |
| tú | quieres | quisiste | querías | querrás | querrías |
| él / ella / usted | quiere | quiso | quería | querrá | querría |
| nosotros/as | queremos | quisimos | queríamos | querremos | querríamos |
| vosotros/as | queréis | quisisteis | queríais | querréis | querríais |
| ellos / ellas / ustedes | quieren | quisieron | querían | querrán | querrían |
And here's each one in action:
- Present – Quiero un café con leche. – “I want a coffee with milk.”
- Preterite (a specific, completed attempt) – Quise llamarte, pero se me acabó la batería. – “I tried to call you, but my battery died.” Note that the preterite of querer often shifts meaning to “tried to”, especially in the negative: no quiso means “he refused”, not just “he didn't want to.”
- Imperfect (an ongoing or background desire) – De pequeña, quería ser bailarina. – “As a little girl, I wanted to be a dancer.”
- Future – Algún día querrás volver aquí. – “One day you'll want to come back here.”
- Conditional – Querría dos entradas, por favor. – “I would like two tickets, please.” Watch the spelling here: querría (conditional, “I would want”) has a double r and is easy to confuse with quería (imperfect, “I wanted/loved”) with a single r.
Querer Conjugation: Indicative Mood (Compound Tenses)
Good news here: the compound tenses are the easy part. Every one of them is simply the verb haber (conjugated) plus the past participle querido. Learn haber once and these fall into place for every verb in Spanish.
| Pronoun | Present Perfect | Pluperfect | Future Perfect | Conditional Perfect |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| yo | he querido | había querido | habré querido | habría querido |
| tú | has querido | habías querido | habrás querido | habrías querido |
| él / ella / usted | ha querido | había querido | habrá querido | habría querido |
| nosotros/as | hemos querido | habíamos querido | habremos querido | habríamos querido |
| vosotros/as | habéis querido | habíais querido | habréis querido | habríais querido |
| ellos / ellas / ustedes | han querido | habían querido | habrán querido | habrían querido |
- Present perfect – Siempre he querido visitar Japón. – “I've always wanted to visit Japan.”
- Pluperfect – Antes de conocerla, nunca había querido sentar cabeza. – “Before meeting her, I had never wanted to settle down.”
- Future perfect – Para entonces, ya habremos querido cambiar de planes mil veces. – “By then, we'll have already wanted to change plans a thousand times.”
- Conditional perfect – Habría querido quedarme más tiempo. – “I would have liked to stay longer.”
(There's one more, the pretérito anterior, hube querido, but you can happily ignore it. It's so rare in modern Spanish that even native speakers go their whole lives without using it.)
Querer Conjugation: Subjunctive Mood
The subjunctive is the mood of doubt, wishes, emotion, and things that aren't (yet) facts, which makes it a natural home for querer. You really only need two forms day to day: the present subjunctive and the imperfect subjunctive.
| Pronoun | Present Subjunctive | Imperfect Subjunctive (-ra) | Imperfect Subjunctive (-se) |
|---|---|---|---|
| yo | quiera | quisiera | quisiese |
| tú | quieras | quisieras | quisieses |
| él / ella / usted | quiera | quisiera | quisiese |
| nosotros/as | queramos | quisiéramos | quisiésemos |
| vosotros/as | queráis | quisierais | quisieseis |
| ellos / ellas / ustedes | quieran | quisieran | quisiesen |
The imperfect subjunctive has two forms, the -ra and the -se. They mean exactly the same thing and are interchangeable; the -ra form is more common in speech, especially in Latin America, so lead with that one.
- Present subjunctive – Espero que quieras venir a la fiesta. – “I hope you want to come to the party.”
- Imperfect subjunctive – Quisiera un vaso de agua, por favor. – “I would like a glass of water, please.” This is the form worth memorising above all the others: quisiera is the softened, polite way to ask for something, gentler than quiero and every bit as useful as “I'd like” is in English.
The subjunctive also has compound forms, built (again) from haber plus querido:
| Pronoun | Present Perfect Subj. | Pluperfect Subj. |
|---|---|---|
| yo | haya querido | hubiera / hubiese querido |
| tú | hayas querido | hubieras / hubieses querido |
| él / ella / usted | haya querido | hubiera / hubiese querido |
| nosotros/as | hayamos querido | hubiéramos / hubiésemos querido |
| vosotros/as | hayáis querido | hubierais / hubieseis querido |
| ellos / ellas / ustedes | hayan querido | hubieran / hubiesen querido |
There's also a future subjunctive (quisiere, quisieres…), but you can safely file it under “nice to recognise, never need to produce”. It survives only in legal documents and old proverbs.
Querer Conjugation: Imperative Mood (Commands)
Telling someone what to want feels a bit strange, so querer is rarely commanded in real life. Still, the forms exist and turn up in romantic or motivational phrasing.
| Pronoun | Affirmative | Negative |
|---|---|---|
| tú | quiere | no quieras |
| usted | quiera | no quiera |
| nosotros/as | queramos | no queramos |
| vosotros/as | quered | no queráis |
| ustedes | quieran | no quieran |
- ¡Quiérete un poco más! – “Love yourself a bit more!”
- No quieras hacerlo todo a la vez. – “Don't try to do everything at once.”
When to Use Querer
Querer covers more ground than English “want” and “love” combined, so it's worth splitting out the four everyday jobs it does.
- Querer a alguien (to love a person) – add the personal a whenever the object is a person: Quiero a mis padres. – “I love my parents.” Skip the a and the sentence sounds like you want to possess them, not love them.
- Te quiero vs te amo – this is the one that catches nearly everyone. Te quiero is the everyday “I love you”, warm, natural, and said constantly between partners, family, and close friends. Te amo is more intense and formal, the kind of line you'd find in a love song or a wedding speech. Use te amo in an ordinary moment and it'll land as oddly theatrical; te quiero is what you actually want most of the time.
- Querer + infinitive (to want to do something) – Quiero aprender español. – “I want to learn Spanish.”
- The polite quisiera – Quisiera reservar una mesa para dos. – “I would like to book a table for two.” Softer and more formal than quiero, this is your go-to in restaurants, shops, and anywhere you want to sound polished rather than blunt.
Why Is Querer Irregular?
Querer comes from the Latin verb quaerere, “to seek” or “to ask”, and its irregularities settle into two clear patterns rather than the total chaos you get with a verb like ser.
- The e→ie stem change. Whenever the stress falls on the stem, the e breaks into ie: quiero, quieres, quiere, quieren in the present, the same shift in the present subjunctive, and in the tú/usted/ustedes commands. The nosotros and vosotros forms keep the stress on the ending, so the stem stays put: queremos, queréis.
- The strong preterite. Instead of a regular querí, the preterite stem swaps to quis-: quise, quisiste, quiso. This isn't random. It's the same pattern shared by poder (pude), poner (puse), and saber (supe), a family of verbs linguists call “strong preterites.” That quis- stem then carries straight through into the imperfect subjunctive (quisiera/quisiese) and the future subjunctive (quisiere), which is why they all echo each other.
Common Mistakes with Querer
A few traps that catch nearly everyone:
- Mixing up querría and quería. One extra r is the entire difference between “I would want” (conditional) and “I wanted/loved” (imperfect). Read carefully, and when speaking, don't rush the double r.
- Treating preterite and imperfect as interchangeable. Quería is a plain, ongoing want; quise usually signals a specific attempt, and no quiso means “refused”, not just “didn't want to.” Mixing these up changes what you're actually saying.
- Overusing te amo in casual contexts. It's not wrong, but it's a lot stronger than most everyday moments call for. Default to te quiero unless you're going for drama.
- Dropping the personal a. Quiero a mi hermana, not quiero mi hermana. Leaving it out is a small slip that native speakers notice immediately.
Querer Conjugation FAQ
Is querer regular or irregular? Irregular. It has an e→ie stem change in most present-tense forms, plus a strong, irregular preterite stem (quis-) that also shapes the imperfect and future subjunctive.
What are the six present-tense forms of querer? Quiero, quieres, quiere, queremos, queréis, quieren, which is “I want, you want, he/she wants, we want, you all want, they want.”
How do you conjugate querer in the past? The preterite (for a specific attempt or completed event) is quise, quisiste, quiso, quisimos, quisisteis, quisieron. The imperfect (for an ongoing or background want) is quería, querías, quería, queríamos, queríais, querían.
What's the difference between te quiero and te amo? Both mean “I love you”, but te quiero is the everyday, natural version used between partners, family, and friends, while te amo is more formal and intense, closer to a grand romantic declaration than daily conversation.
What does quisiera mean and when do you use it? Quisiera means “I would like”, it's the polite, softened way to ask for something. Use it in restaurants, shops, or any time quiero would sound a bit too blunt: Quisiera un café, por favor.
Time to Put Querer to Work
You've now got every tense of querer laid out, an example for each, the te quiero vs te amo distinction sorted, and the backstory behind its two irregular patterns.
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 querer into real sentences out loud: what you want for breakfast, what you'd like to do this weekend, who you love. Pair this guide with our ser vs estar and Spanish numbers guides to keep building your core Spanish, and if you want to hear querer used naturally by native speakers, SpanishPod101 is a great listening resource.
But the tables were only ever the warm-up. What matters is telling someone, in their own language, exactly what you want, or exactly how you feel about them. That's exactly what we get you doing from day one inside the Fluent in 3 Months Bootcamp. So go and want something in Spanish. ¡Quiérelo de verdad!
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