Methods and apparatuses for beam failure recovery (BFR) in a wireless communication system. A method for operating a user equipment includes identifying configuration information for at least two beam failure detection (BFD) reference signal (RS) sets each comprising one or more BFD RSs resources and configuration information for at least two new beam identification (NBI) RS sets each comprising one or more NBI RS resources. The method further includes detecting a beam failure event for one of the at least two BFD RS sets; identifying, based on measuring the one or more NBI RS resources in a NBI RS set that is associated with the one BFD RS set, one or more NBI RS resources for a new beam recovery; and triggering, in response to detection of the beam failure event for the one BFD RS set and identification of the one or more NBI RS resources, a BFR event.