How to Conjugate Salir in Spanish — All Tenses with Examples

If you’ve ever paused mid-sentence trying to say “I’m going out tonight” or “We left early,” salir is probably one of the verbs tripping you up. It looks simple, but it shows up everywhere in Spanish, and the meaning changes depending on the phrase.

Quick answer: Salir means to leave, to go out, or to come out/appear. It’s irregular in the yo form in the present (salgo), irregular in the future and conditional stems (saldr-), and irregular in the present subjunctive (salga). The preterite is mostly regular (salí, saliste, salió…), the imperative has the short form sal, and the gerund is saliendo.

What salir means in Spanish

Salir is one of those verbs that English speakers often learn too narrowly as just “to leave.” That’s part of it, but not all of it.

Here are the main meanings:

• to leave / exit a place
• to go out socially
• to come out / appear
• to turn out / result
• to leave on a departure time in some contexts

Examples:

• Salgo de casa a las ocho. 🔊 (I leave home at eight.)
• ¿Sales esta noche? 🔊 (Are you going out tonight?)
• El sol sale a las siete. 🔊 (The sun rises at seven.)
• La foto salió borrosa. 🔊 (The photo came out blurry.)

That last example is important: salir often describes the result of something, not just motion. If you only memorize “to leave,” you’ll miss a lot of real Spanish.

A useful memory shortcut

Think of salir as a verb of movement outward and outcome. Something goes out of a place, out into public, or out as a result.

That’s why it appears in everyday phrases like:

• salir de = to leave from
• salir a = to go out to / head out to
• salir con = to go out with / date someone
• salir bien = to go well
• salir mal = to go badly

If you want to build real speaking speed, you need these phrases to come out automatically. That’s exactly the kind of output practice we focus on in VerbPal: not just recognizing salir, but typing and producing it in full phrases until it’s usable.

Action step: Write five mini-sentences with salir: one for leaving a place, one for going out socially, one for dating, one for “turn out well,” and one for “come out.” Say them aloud after you write them.

Present tense of salir

The present tense is where salir first shows its irregularity. The yo form changes to salgo, while the other forms stay regular.

Examples:

• Yo salgo temprano. 🔊 (I leave early.)
• ¿Sales con tus amigos? 🔊 (Do you go out with your friends?)
• Ella sale del trabajo a las seis. 🔊 (She leaves work at six.)

Why only the yo form changes?

This is the classic go-verb pattern. In the present tense, several common Spanish verbs add a -g- in the yo form:

• salgo — I leave
• tengo — I have
• pongo — I put
• traigo — I bring
• caigo — I fall
• hago — I do / make

You’ll see the same pattern in other tenses too, especially when the verb needs a stem change to support pronunciation or historical forms. If you can recognize one go-verb, you can start spotting the others faster.

At VerbPal, this is exactly the kind of pattern we group together in drills. Instead of treating salgo as a random exception, we train it alongside other high-frequency go-verbs so your brain stores the pattern, not just one isolated answer.

Present tense in real life

Use the present for habits, routines, and current actions:

• Salgo de casa a las siete todos los días. (I leave home at seven every day.)
• Mi hermano sale mucho los fines de semana. (My brother goes out a lot on weekends.)
• La revista sale mañana. (The magazine comes out tomorrow.)

That last sentence shows another meaning: salir can mean “to be released” or “to come out” when talking about publications, products, or media.

Pro tip: Drill the six present forms by typing them from memory, then immediately use three of them in your own sentences. Recognition is not enough; production is what sticks.

Preterite of salir

The preterite is pleasantly simple: it is regular.

Examples:

• Salí de casa tarde. 🔊 (I left home late.)
• Anoche salimos con unos amigos. 🔊 (Last night we went out with some friends.)
• La película salió muy bien. 🔊 (The movie turned out very well.)

Preterite meaning: a completed action

Use the preterite when the leaving happened once, at a specific time, and finished.

• Salimos a las nueve. (We left at nine.)
• ¿Cuándo saliste de la oficina? (When did you leave the office?)
• Salió corriendo. (He/she ran out.)

If you’re choosing between preterite and imperfect, ask: Did the action finish? If yes, preterite is usually your answer.

For a deeper comparison, see our guide to Spanish preterite vs imperfect.

Action step: Make a two-column list: “routine” and “finished event.” Put one salir sentence in the present under routine and three salir sentences in the preterite under finished event.

Future and conditional: the saldr- stem

Here’s where salir changes shape more noticeably. In the future and conditional, the stem becomes saldr-.

Future tense of salir

Examples:

• Saldré después de cenar. 🔊 (I will go out after dinner.)
• ¿Saldrás con nosotros mañana? 🔊 (Will you go out with us tomorrow?)
• La verdad saldrá a la luz. 🔊 (The truth will come out.)

Conditional tense of salir

Examples:

• Yo saldría más, pero estoy cansado. (I would go out more, but I’m tired.)
• ¿Salirías con él? (Would you go out with him?)
• Las cosas saldrían mejor con un plan. (Things would turn out better with a plan.)

The future and conditional are both useful for plans, predictions, and hypotheticals — but for real speaking, you’ll want them to feel automatic. That’s why we recommend drilling them in short bursts instead of trying to memorize a giant chart all at once. In VerbPal, our review scheduling uses spaced repetition based on the SM-2 algorithm, so forms like saldré and saldría come back right before you’re likely to forget them.

Pro tip: Practice future and conditional as pairs: saldré / saldría, saldrás / saldrías, saldrá / saldría. The shared stem does half the work for you.

Present subjunctive of salir

The present subjunctive uses the stem salg-.

Examples:

• Quiero que salgas conmigo. 🔊 (I want you to go out with me.)
• Es posible que salgan tarde. 🔊 (It’s possible that they leave late.)
• No creo que la foto salga bien. 🔊 (I don’t think the photo will turn out well.)

If you’re still building confidence with subjunctive triggers, our guide to the WEIRDO subjunctive acronym is a helpful companion.

Action step: Take three trigger phrases — quiero que, es posible que, no creo que — and complete each one with a different subjunctive form of salir.

Imperfect subjunctive of salir

The imperfect subjunctive is built from the preterite stem salier-.

Examples:

• Si saliera más temprano, llegaría a tiempo. (If I left earlier, I’d arrive on time.)
• Quería que salieras conmigo. (I wanted you to go out with me.)
• Pensé que la reunión saldría mejor. (I thought the meeting would go better.)

The two endings (-ra and -se) are both correct. In everyday spoken Spanish, the -ra form is more common in many regions, but you should recognize both.

For more on this tense, see our guide to Spanish imperfect subjunctive.

Pro tip: Learn the -ra set first if you want the highest practical payoff, then add the -se forms for recognition.

Imperative, gerund, and past participle

These forms show up constantly in speech, instructions, and compound tenses.

Imperative of salir

The affirmative tú command is sal — short and irregular.

Examples:

• Sal de aquí. 🔊 (Get out of here.)
• Salgan por la puerta de atrás. 🔊 (Leave through the back door.)
• Salgamos temprano. 🔊 (Let’s leave early.)

Gerund

The gerund is saliendo.

• Estoy saliendo ahora. 🔊 (I’m leaving now.)
• Está saliendo con alguien. 🔊 (He/she is dating someone.)
• El sol está saliendo. 🔊 (The sun is coming up.)

Past participle

The past participle is salido.

• He salido tarde hoy. (I’ve left late today.)
• Ya han salido. (They have already left.)
• La noticia ha salido en la prensa. (The news has appeared in the press.)

If you’re working on compound tenses, salido pairs with haber — a good reason to review haber conjugation alongside salir. In VerbPal, this is where structured learning matters: our Journey module moves you through verb systems step by step, including compound tenses, subjunctive, irregulars, and reflexives, so forms don’t get skipped just because an app has no real pathway.

Action step: Make one command sentence, one estar + gerundio sentence, and one haber + participle sentence with salir.

Salir with prepositions: de, a, and con

A lot of the real meaning of salir comes from the preposition that follows it.

Salir de = to leave from

Use salir de when you talk about the place you’re leaving.

• Salgo de casa a las ocho. 🔊 (I leave home at eight.)
• Salimos de la oficina tarde. 🔊 (We leave the office late.)
• ¿Sales de Madrid mañana? 🔊 (Are you leaving Madrid tomorrow?)

Salir a = to go out to / head out to

Use salir a when the destination or purpose matters.

• Salimos a cenar. 🔊 (We go out to eat dinner.)
• Salió a comprar pan. 🔊 (He/she went out to buy bread.)
• Voy a salir a caminar. 🔊 (I’m going to go out for a walk.)

Salir con = to go out with / date

Use salir con for social relationships and dating.

• Sale con una chica de Barcelona. 🔊 (He’s dating a girl from Barcelona.)
• ¿Sales con alguien? 🔊 (Are you dating someone?)
• Salí con mis amigos anoche. 🔊 (I went out with my friends last night.)

These prepositions are not optional decoration — they carry the meaning. If you learn salir without them, you’ll understand less and speak less naturally.

For more verb-preposition patterns, see Spanish verb prepositions and VerbPal’s Spanish verb guides.

Pro tip: Learn salir in chunks, not as a bare infinitive: salir de casa, salir a cenar, salir con alguien. That’s how native-like usage gets built.

Common idioms and everyday expressions with salir

This is where salir becomes especially useful in conversation.

Salir bien / salir mal

These phrases describe how something turned out.

• El examen salió bien. 🔊 (The exam went well.)
• La entrevista salió mal. 🔊 (The interview went badly.)
• Todo salió perfecto. 🔊 (Everything turned out perfectly.)

¿Cómo te fue? / ¿Cómo te salió?

Both can ask how something went, but they’re not identical.

• ¿Cómo te fue? (How did it go? / How did it go for you?)
• ¿Cómo te salió el examen? 🔊 (How did the exam go for you? / How did you do on the exam?)

The second one focuses more on the result of a specific task or event. In everyday speech, ¿Cómo te fue? is often the more general and natural option.

Salirse con la suya

This means to get one’s way, often by being clever, stubborn, or manipulative.

• Siempre se sale con la suya. (He always gets his way.)
• No te vas a salir con la tuya. (You’re not going to get your way.)

Other useful expressions

• Salir adelante → to get by, to pull through
  • A pesar de todo, salió adelante. (Despite everything, he/she pulled through.)
• Salir a la luz → to come to light
  • La verdad salió a la luz. (The truth came to light.)
• Salir de dudas → to clear up doubts
  • Hablemos para salir de dudas. (Let’s talk to clear things up.)

These expressions are high-value because they appear in real conversation, news, and storytelling. Corpus data from the CREA corpus of Real Academia Española shows that common verbs like salir appear across a wide range of spoken and written contexts, which is exactly why learning the phrase patterns matters as much as the isolated forms.

Action step: Pick two idioms from this section and use each one in a sentence about your real life. Personal examples are easier to remember than generic ones.

The go-verb pattern: salgo, tengo, pongo, traigo, caigo, hago

If salir felt random at first, this is the part that makes it click.

A group of very common verbs share the -go irregularity in the yo form of the present tense:

• salir → salgo
• tener → tengo
• poner → pongo
• traer → traigo
• caer → caigo
• hacer → hago

These verbs are not identical in every tense, but they share enough of a pattern that learning them together helps a lot.

Why this matters

When you hear or see one of these forms, your brain can start expecting the pattern:

• Yo salgo → I leave
• Yo tengo → I have
• Yo pongo → I put
• Yo traigo → I bring
• Yo caigo → I fall
• Yo hago → I do / make

That’s a huge advantage because these are among the most frequent verbs in Spanish. If you can produce them quickly, you unlock a lot of everyday speech.

Related conjugation pages

If you want to compare the pattern side by side, check out:

• Poner conjugation table
• Traer conjugation table
• Salir conjugation table

And if you want to drill the pattern as a set, that’s exactly where VerbPal’s structured practice shines. We surface related irregulars together, and because we cover all conjugations — not just a few headline tenses — you keep seeing the full verb system, including subjunctive, commands, irregular stems, and the forms most apps tend to ignore.

Pro tip: Memorize the pattern out loud as a chain: salgo, tengo, pongo, traigo, caigo, hago. Then reverse it. Fast retrieval matters.

Common mistakes with salir

Even intermediate learners trip over salir because it shows up in so many contexts.

1) Forgetting the irregular yo form

Wrong: yo sallo
Right: yo salgo → I leave / go out

2) Using the wrong preposition

Wrong: salir la casa
Right: salir de la casa → to leave the house

Wrong: salir amigos
Right: salir con amigos → to go out with friends

3) Mixing up salir and irse

Both can mean “to leave,” but they are not interchangeable in every context.

• Salgo de casa. (I leave the house.)
• Me voy. (I’m leaving / I’m going away.)

Irse often emphasizes departure more directly, while salir often focuses on exiting a place or going out socially.

4) Forgetting the result meaning

Wrong: La película fue bien.
Right: La película salió bien. → The movie turned out well.

5) Translating too literally

English “to go out” can mean socializing, leaving, or dating. Spanish makes those distinctions through context and prepositions.

• Sale con Ana (He’s dating Ana.)
• Sale con amigos (He goes out with friends.)
• Sale de la oficina (He leaves the office.)

The fix is not more passive reading. It’s repeated production in context, which is why we built VerbPal around active recall, typed answers, and varied practice formats instead of passive recognition or endless multiple choice.

Action step: Turn each mistake above into one correct sentence of your own. Fixing errors actively is more effective than just rereading the rule.

Quick practice: can you choose the right form?

This is also a good reminder that one question is never enough. To really own salir, you need to see it in present, preterite, future, conditional, imperative, and subjunctive contexts. That’s why our learners use VerbPal’s games, drills, and structured review together rather than relying on one repetitive format.

Pro tip: After answering a practice prompt, change the person and tense: salgo → salimos → salí → saldré → salga.

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