Aspects relate to reporting beam failure. Upon detecting a beam failure, a user equipment (UE) may transmit a beam failure recovery request to a base station. If the uplink is working, the UE may transmit the beam failure recovery request via uplink signaling (e.g., via a physical uplink control channel or a physical uplink shared channel). If the uplink is not working or if the beam failure is due to downlink quality degradation, the UE may transmit the beam failure recovery request via a random access channel (RACH) message.