Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communications are described. A base station may transmit control signaling including a candidate uplink grant configuration to a user equipment (UE). The candidate uplink grant configuration may include an indication of multiple candidate uplink grants for an uplink grant, each candidate uplink grant indicating one or more resource block sets configured for a channel access procedure. The UE may select a candidate uplink grant for transmitting the uplink transmission based on an availability of one or more resource block sets of the selected candidate uplink grant. For example, the UE may perform a channel access procedure for the resource block sets indicated by the candidate uplink grants to determine the availability of each candidate uplink grant. The UE may transmit an uplink transmission to the base station using the one or more resource block sets indicated by the selected candidate uplink grant.