Methods and apparatuses for signaling of inter-cell beam management in a wireless communication system. A method of operating a user equipment includes receiving configuration information for a list of transmission configuration indication (TCI) states; receiving an indication of activated TCI state code points via a medium access control-control element (MAC CE); and receiving a downlink control information (DCI) indicating an activated TCI state code point. The method further includes determining a TCI state to apply based on the activated TCI state code point; determining an entity of the TCI state and a source reference signal (RS) of the TCI state; updating spatial filters for downlink (DL) channels or uplink (UL) channels based on the source RS and entity; and receiving or transmitting the DL channels or the UL channels of the entity, respectively, based on the updated spatial filters.