Abstract: Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communications are described. A user equipment (UE) may communicate with a base station in a wireless communications system. The UE may perform a random access procedure to communicate with the base station. The base station may configure the UE with criteria for selecting a transmission mode. The UE may select a transmission mode for transmitting repetitions of physical random access channel (PRACH) transmissions according to current conditions satisfying the criteria. The criteria may be different based on a contention free random access (CFRA) procedure type or a purpose of the CFRA procedure. The transmission modes may include repetitions of PRACH on multiple random access channel (RACH) occasions, multiple component carriers (CCs), multiple frequency allocations of a same CC, superposition of preambles, different RACH resources, or different PRACH formats.