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

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Sein is one of the first verbs every German learner meets, one of the most useful, and the most irregular of them all. It means “to be”, you'll lean on it constantly for who you are, where you're from and how you feel, and on top of all that it does a second job most learners don't see coming: it's the auxiliary that builds the past tense of verbs of movement. Ich bin gegangen, er ist gefahren, wir sind angekommen. Miss that second job and your German past tense breaks in a very noticeable way.

Don't worry. By the end of this guide you'll have every tense of sein laid out in clean tables, with example sentences for each, plus the one rule that tells you exactly when to reach for sein instead of haben. But first, the hack that saves you weeks of work.

The Sein Conjugation Hack: Learn These First

Here's the honest truth about conjugation tables: you do not need to memorise every tense of sein before you can use it in real conversation. Native-sounding beginners lean on a tiny handful of forms, and sein‘s present tense is one of the very first things you should drill until it's automatic.

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

• ich bin (“I am”), du bist (“you are”), er/sie/es ist (“he/she/it is”), wir sind (“we are”), ihr seid (“you all are”), sie/Sie sind (“they are” / “you are”, formal)

That single row of six words will carry you through introductions, descriptions, where you're from, your job and your mood. Add the Präteritum (ich war, “I was”) for talking about the past, and you've covered the vast majority of everyday speech. Everything below that is for rounding out your German over time, not for blocking you today.

Right, now let's build the full picture.

Sein at a Glance

Infinitive	sein
Partizip II (past participle)	gewesen
Perfekt auxiliary	sein (yes, sein uses itself)
English meaning	“to be”
Verb type	irregular (strong, suppletive)

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, singular & plural)

Sein Conjugation: Simple Tenses (Präsens & Präteritum)

German only has two simple (one-word) tenses, and sein is irregular in both of them.

Pronoun	Präsens	Präteritum
ich	bin	war
du	bist	warst
er/sie/es	ist	war
wir	sind	waren
ihr	seid	wart
sie/Sie	sind	waren

• Präsens – Ich bin Ire. – “I am Irish.”
• Präteritum – Ich war letztes Jahr in Berlin. – “I was in Berlin last year.”

One handy quirk: with most German verbs, spoken conversation prefers the Perfekt (ich habe gemacht) over the Präteritum, which sounds a bit bookish. Sein is the big exception. Ich war is what Germans actually say out loud, in speech and in writing alike, so it's worth learning solidly rather than treating it as “just for stories”.

Sein Conjugation: Compound Tenses

These are all built with an auxiliary: the Perfekt and Plusquamperfekt use a form of sein plus the past participle gewesen, while the Futur tenses use werden plus an infinitive. And here's the twist that trips up learners coming from Spanish or French: sein‘s own auxiliary in the Perfekt and Plusquamperfekt is sein, not haben. Ich bin gewesen, not ich habe gewesen.

Pronoun	Perfekt	Plusquamperfekt	Futur I	Futur II
ich	bin gewesen	war gewesen	werde sein	werde gewesen sein
du	bist gewesen	warst gewesen	wirst sein	wirst gewesen sein
er/sie/es	ist gewesen	war gewesen	wird sein	wird gewesen sein
wir	sind gewesen	waren gewesen	werden sein	werden gewesen sein
ihr	seid gewesen	wart gewesen	werdet sein	werdet gewesen sein
sie/Sie	sind gewesen	waren gewesen	werden sein	werden gewesen sein

• Perfekt – Ich bin noch nie in Japan gewesen. – “I have never been to Japan.”
• Plusquamperfekt – Bevor ich nach Berlin zog, war ich noch nie im Ausland gewesen. – “Before I moved to Berlin, I had never been abroad.”
• Futur I – Nächstes Jahr werde ich dreißig sein. – “Next year I'll be thirty.”
• Futur II – Bis Mitternacht werden wir schon zu Hause gewesen sein. – “By midnight we'll already have been home.”

In practice, Germans use the Präsens with a time word (morgen bin ich…) far more often than the Futur tenses above, but you'll meet both, especially Futur I, so it's worth recognising.

Sein Conjugation: Konjunktiv

The Konjunktiv is German's mood for hypotheticals, wishes and reported speech. With sein you'll use one of these two forms constantly, and the other only occasionally.

Konjunktiv II is the everyday one, your “would be” and “if I were” form:

Pronoun	Konjunktiv II
ich	wäre
du	wärst
er/sie/es	wäre
wir	wären
ihr	wärt
sie/Sie	wären

• Wenn ich reich wäre, würde ich um die Welt reisen. – “If I were rich, I'd travel the world.”
• Das wäre toll! – “That would be great!”

Konjunktiv I shows up almost exclusively in reported speech, the kind of “he said that…” construction you meet in news reports and formal writing:

Pronoun	Konjunktiv I
ich	sei
du	seist
er/sie/es	sei
wir	seien
ihr	seiet
sie/Sie	seien

• Er sagte, er sei müde. – “He said (that) he was tired.”

Learn wäre first and thoroughly, you'll reach for it constantly. Sei and its family are worth recognising when you read the news, but you'll rarely need to produce them yourself in conversation.

Sein Conjugation: Imperativ (Commands)

Telling someone to “be” something (be quiet, be careful) uses the imperative.

Pronoun	Imperative
du	sei!
wir	seien wir!
ihr	seid!
Sie	seien Sie!

• Sei vorsichtig! – “Be careful!”
• Seien wir ehrlich. – “Let's be honest.”

When to Use Sein

Sein has two completely different jobs in German, and the second one is where learners come unstuck.

Job one: the linking verb (“copula”). This is the straightforward one, and if you've studied Spanish you'll actually find German easier here: there's no ser/estar split to worry about. One verb, sein, covers identity, description, origin and mood alike:

• Ich bin Lehrer. – “I am a teacher.” (occupation)
• Sie ist müde. – “She is tired.” (state, no separate verb needed)
• Wir sind aus Irland. – “We're from Ireland.” (origin)
• Das Auto ist rot. – “The car is red.” (description)

Job two, and the one that really matters: the Perfekt auxiliary for verbs of movement and change of state. Most German verbs build their Perfekt with haben (ich habe gemacht, ich habe gegessen). But verbs describing movement from A to B (gehen, fahren, kommen, fliegen, laufen) or a change of state (werden, sterben, wachsen, aufwachen) take sein instead:

• Ich bin gestern ins Kino gegangen. – “I went to the cinema yesterday.”
• Er ist letztes Jahr gestorben. – “He died last year.”

Compare that to a non-motion verb, which stays with haben: Ich habe das Buch gelesen (“I have read the book”). And watch for verbs like fahren that can go either way depending on meaning: Er hat das Auto gefahren (“He drove the car”, transitive, haben) versus Er ist nach Hause gefahren (“He drove home”, motion, sein). This sein-versus-haben choice is the single most useful grammar rule to internalise from this whole page.

Why Is Sein So Irregular?

If sein‘s forms look like they were stitched together from three different verbs, that's because they were. Linguists call this suppletion, and sein is a textbook case, built from three separate Indo-European roots that never merged into one regular pattern:

• The b- forms (bin, bist) come from an old root also behind English “be”.
• The s- forms (ist, sind, sei, seien) come from the root behind English “is” and Latin est.
• The w- forms (war, gewesen) come from the root behind English “was” and “were”.

If that sounds familiar, it's because English does exactly the same thing with “am, is, are, was, were, be”. You've actually been using a suppletive verb your whole life without noticing, so sein‘s chaos is far more familiar than it first looks.

Common Mistakes with Sein

• Using haben instead of sein for movement verbs. Ich habe gegangen is wrong; it's ich bin gegangen. This is the most common sein-related error, and it's worth drilling the movement/change-of-state list until the auxiliary choice is automatic.
• Mixing up war and wäre. War states a plain fact about the past (“I was”). Wäre is hypothetical (“I would be” / “I were”). Ich war müde and Ich wäre müde look one letter apart but mean quite different things.
• Forgetting that sein takes its own auxiliary. It feels odd to say ich bin gewesen rather than ich habe gewesen, but that's the form Germans use, so learn it as a fixed fact rather than trying to reason it out.

Sein Conjugation FAQ

Is sein regular or irregular? Irregular, and one of the most irregular verbs in German. Its forms come from three separate historical roots, which is why bin, ist and war look nothing alike.

What are the six present-tense forms of sein? Bin, bist, ist, sind, seid, sind, which is “I am, you are, he/she is, we are, you all are, they are.”

How do you conjugate sein in the past? The Präteritum is war, warst, war, waren, wart, waren. Unlike most German verbs, this simple past is used constantly in everyday speech, not just in writing.

When does sein act as an auxiliary instead of haben? For the Perfekt and Plusquamperfekt of verbs of movement (gehen, fahren, kommen) and change of state (werden, sterben, aufwachen). Most other verbs use haben.

What's the difference between war and wäre? War is a statement of fact about the past (“I was”). Wäre is the Konjunktiv II form, used for hypotheticals and wishes (“I would be”, “if I were”).

Du Bist Jetzt ein Sein-Experte!

Du bist jetzt ein Experte means “you're now an expert”, and after all that, you genuinely are. You've got every tense of sein in front of you, an example for each, and the sein-versus-haben rule that actually matters for building correct German sentences.

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 sein into real sentences out loud. Pair this page with our guide to German phrases to round out your everyday foundations, and if you'd like to hear sein used naturally by native speakers, GermanPod101 is a great listening resource.

But the tables were only ever the warm-up. The whole point of learning ich bin, du bist and er ist is to walk up to a real person and say something true about yourself, which is exactly what we get you doing from day one inside the Fluent in 3 Months Bootcamp. So go and be something in German. Sei mutig!