Aspects of the disclosure provide a method of beam failure handling. The method can include performing beam quality measurement of one or more beams transmitted from a base station (BS) at a user equipment (UE) in a beamformed wireless communication system, determining a beam failure occurs based on the beam quality measurement, and performing a beam recovery process that includes at least one of a contention-free beam recovery process or a contention-based beam recovery process. The one or more beams are used for transmitting physical downlink control channels (PDCCHs).