How to Conjugate 'Célébrer' (to Celebrate)

The French verb célébrer means "to celebrate." It is a stem-changing verb, which means the ending not only changes based on the tense and subject pronoun you're using, the first part of the word may change, as well.

How to Conjugate the French Verb Célébrer

In most tenses, the you determine the stem like you would a regular -er verb: Drop the -er off the infinitive, leaving the stem of célébr-. Use the regular -er ending that matches the subject pronoun and tense you're using.

But in the present, subjunctive and imperative tenses, the stem changes to célèbr- when using je, tu, il/elle or ils/elles. When using nous or vous, the regular stem remains. An exception: In the future and conditional tenses, either stem is acceptable for all subject pronouns, as you can see in the chart below.

How to Use Celebrer in the Past Tense

To say you celebrated something, you'd most likely use the passé composé. Célébrer uses the auxiliary verb avoir, and the past participle is célébré.

For example:

Nous avons célébré après la cérémonie de remise des diplômes.
We celebrated after the graduation ceremony.