Future perfect continuous (I will have been working here ten years)

Future perfect continuous: form

We use will/shall + have + been + the -ing form of the verb.

We use shall only for future time reference with I and we. Shall is more formal and less common than will.

	singular and plural
+	I, weshe, he, it, you, they	(full form)will or shallwill	have been working
I, she, he, it, you, we, they	(short form)’ll
−	I, weshe, he, it, you, they	(full form)will not or shall notwill not	have been working
I, weshe, he, it, you, they	(short form)won’t or shan’twon’t
? + Will? − Won’t	I, she, he, it, you, we, they		have been working?

Note: Shall I, shall we and shan’t I, shan’t we in future perfect continuous questions are rare.

Future perfect continuous: use

Emphasising the length of an event at a time in the future

We use the future perfect continuous form when we are looking back to the past from a point in the future and we want to emphasise the length or duration of an activity or event:

• In September the head teacher will have been teaching at the school for 20 years.
• In September, she will have been living in France for a year.
• I will have been studying English for three years by the end of this course.
• We’re late. I think they*’ll have been waiting** for us. We’d better go.*

See also

• Future: will and shall
• Shall
• Will