Certain aspects of the present disclosure provide techniques for switching control beams in multi-link systems using new radio (NR) technology multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques. A user equipment (UE) may obtain a configuration from a base station (BS) comprising at least one first pattern of beams to monitor when performing a beam recovery procedure, communicate using beamforming, with the BS, via an active transmit and receive beam pair, determine a beam failure of the active transmit and receive beam pair, and monitor the beams according to the first pattern in response to the beam failure.