Querer is one of the most important irregular verbs in Spanish — it appears in virtually every GCSE and A-Level task.
Practice querer free →Querer means 'to want', and — used with a person — 'to love'. It is indispensable from your very first conversations: quiero un café (I want a coffee), quiero aprender español (I want to learn Spanish). It is a stem-changing verb, with e shifting to ie in the present (quiero, quieres, quiere), and it has an irregular preterite (quise, quiso). Like poder, it is usually followed by an infinitive or a noun, so it slots easily into sentences. The conditional querría and the polite quisiera ('I would like') are worth knowing for ordering and requesting politely — small touches that read as genuinely fluent at GCSE and A-Level.
Quick facts
Querer (to want) is an irregular -er verb.
Real sentences across different tenses — the kind of thing you'd actually say or write.
Desiring a noun: quiero un helado (I want an ice cream), ¿qué quieres? (what do you want?).
Querer + infinitive: quiero salir (I want to go out), no quiere estudiar (he doesn't want to study).
With people, querer means to love: te quiero (I love you), used for family, friends and partners.
Quisiera and querría mean 'I would like' — softer and more polite than quiero, ideal for ordering: quisiera un café.
Fixed expressions worth knowing — they come up in listening, reading and writing tasks.
Idiomatic expressions
In the preterite, quise = tried to; no quise = refused. This is a common essay nuance worth knowing for Grade 9. The stem in the preterite is quis-: quise, quisiste, quiso…
Stem-changing (e→ie) in all forms except nosotros and vosotros.
Completely irregular stem: quis-. Use the standard preterite -er endings on this stem.
Irregular future stem: querr-. Apply the regular future endings to querr-.
Uses the same irregular stem as the future: querr-.
Type conjugations from memory and get instant feedback. That's how you actually build the automatic recall the exam needs — not from reading tables.
Practice querer now →Three questions, no account needed. Type the form, then press Enter or tap Check.
yo: quiero, tú: quieres, él: quiere, nosotros: queremos, vosotros: queréis, ellos: quieren
Querer is irregular. The tenses with irregular forms are: Presente, Pretérito Indefinido, Futuro, Condicional.
The past participle is querido (he querido) and the gerund is queriendo (estoy queriendo).
Verbs that are easy to confuse with querer or that behave like it.
Querer is on the AQA, Edexcel and Eduqas GCSE Spanish vocabulary lists. Compare the exam boards.
Written by Daniel Holmes for GCSE & A-Level Spanish students.