Methods and apparatus for uplink control channel detection. In an exemplary embodiment, a method includes generating Top-Q Channel Quality Indicator (CQI) candidates from information received over an uplink control channel, generating a CQI symbol for each of the Top-Q CQI candidates, and generating a CQI energy metric from the CQI symbols. If the uplink control channel is formatted in format 2, then performing operations of combining the CQI energy metric with a pilot energy metric to generate a combined metric and searching the combined metric to determine transmitted CQI bits. If the control channel is formatted in format 2a or format 2b, then performing operations of generating an acknowledgement (ACK) energy metric for ACK candidates, combining the CQI energy metric, the pilot energy metric, and the ACK energy metric to generate the combined metric, and searching the combined metric to determine transmitted CQI bits and ACK bits.