Certain aspects of the present disclosure provide techniques for handling a radio link failure timer in the presence of a conditional handover command. A method that may be performed by a user equipment (UE) includes receiving, from a serving cell, a conditional handover command for handing over the UE to a target neighbor cell, wherein the conditional handover command includes one or more triggering conditions for executing a handover to a candidate target cell; monitoring one or more first signals from the candidate target cell for the one or more triggering conditions; and performing one of: stopping a timer based on performing a conditional handover to the target candidate cell; or detecting a timer has expired while monitoring the one or more first signals from the candidate target cell for the one or more triggering conditions.