Laravel localization in Spanish Español

Locale codes

Set the base locale in config/app.php. For regional variants, Spanish commonly uses: es_ES, es_MX, es_AR, es_CO, es_CL

// config/app.php
'locale' => 'es',
'fallback_locale' => 'en',

// Or switch at runtime
App::setLocale('es');

Plural rules: what Spanish actually needs

CLDR defines 3 cardinal categories for Spanish. The sample numbers below were computed by ICU for this exact locale:

Laravel's trans_choice() maps numbers to 2 pipe-separated forms for this locale:

// lang/es/messages.php
'items' => ':count item|:count items'

// Usage
trans_choice('messages.items', $count, ['count' => $count]);

Try any number live in the pluralization tester.

Localized dates with Carbon

Real output for Spanish (es locale), generated by Carbon for March 21, 2026:

$date = now()->locale('es');

$date->translatedFormat('l, j F Y');
// "sábado, 21 marzo 2026"

$date->isoFormat('LLLL');
// "sábado, 21 de marzo de 2026 14:30"

$date->isoFormat('L');
// "21/03/2026"

$date->subDays(3)->diffForHumans();
// "hace 3 meses"

What to watch out for in Spanish

• Uses tú/usted distinction (and vos in parts of Latin America); decide on formal vs informal address before translating UI copy.
• Nouns are gendered and adjectives agree in gender and number.
• Inverted punctuation opens questions and exclamations (¿…? ¡…!).
• Decimal comma and dot as thousands separator in most regions (1.234,56); Mexico uses the decimal point.

Framework strings already translated

Laravel's own validation, auth and pagination strings are maintained in Spanish by the open-source Laravel-Lang project (MIT). Install them, then manage your app's own strings live:

composer require laravel-lang/common --dev
php artisan lang:add es
php artisan lang:update