Certain aspects of the present disclosure provide techniques for compact downlink control information (DCI) signaling design for ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC). A method for wireless communications performed by a base station (BS) is provided. The method generally includes generating DCI, the DCI scheduling at least one transmission, according to a first DCI format. The first DCI format is compressed relative to a second DCI format and includes a carrier indicator field (CIF) and/or a rate-matching indicator field. The BS transmits the DCI to a user equipment (UE). The UE communicates with the BS based on the received DCI.