Certain aspects of the present disclosure relate to methods and apparatus for blind detection of cell-specific reference signals. Methods and apparatus are provided for detecting a cell-specific reference signal (CRS) in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexed (OFDM) symbol by a user equipment (UE). The method generally includes predicting a current channel response of a current OFDM symbol based on a channel response of at least one previous OFDM symbol, estimating a noise power level of the current OFDM symbol, forming a log likelihood ratio (LLR) of two detection hypotheses based on the predicted current channel response and the estimated noise power level, comparing the LLR to a pre-determined threshold, and determining that at least one CRS is present in the current OFDM symbol based on the comparison.