The conditions and mechanisms of through-thickness texture gradient formation during cold rolling of beryllium foils were studied in this work using experiments and numerical simulations. Electron backscatter diffraction was used to characterize the crystallographic texture in different layers of beryllium foil after cold rolling without lubrication. The central layer demonstrated a split basal {0001} 〈10−10〉 texture inherited from the hot rolled state. At the same time, friction leads to the formation of a strong basal texture in the surface layer. A visco-plastic self-consistent model was used to explain the evolution of beryllium texture. The idealized simplified tensor approach and FEM calculations were utilized for presentation of beryllium deformation history. It was established that the shear strain led to intense cyclic rotation of crystallites in mutually opposite directions. Formation of a through-thickness texture gradient during cold rolling was determined mostly by the maximum value of the symmetric part of the velocity gradient tensor ε̇₁₃^max. Finite element analysis demonstrated that friction conditions strongly affected the ε̇₁₃^max value.