Certain aspects of the present disclosure relate to methods and apparatus for beam recovery and radio link failure (RLF) in communications systems using beamforming and operating according to new radio (NR) technologies. An exemplary method that may be performed by a UE includes communicating using beamforming with a base station (BS) via a transmit beam and a receive beam of an active beam pair and obtaining an indication of one or more alternative beams for the UE to use to send a beam recovery message to the BS in the event the transmit beam and the receive beam of the active beam pair become misaligned.