The effect of strain path on microstructure and texture formation in an equiatomic CoCrFeMnNi high entropy alloy was investigated. For this purpose, the alloy was cold-rolled to 90% reduction in thickness (total equivalent strain (εeq) ∼2.65) using unidirectional cold-rolling (UCR) and different cross-rolling routes. In the MSCCR route, the samples were rotated by 90° around the ND in between each pass. In the TSCCR(90°) and TSCCR(45°) routes, the samples were deformed by unidirectional rolling to half of the εeq (∼1.3) in the first step and the rest half of the strain (εeq ∼1.3) was imparted after rotation around the ND by 90° and 45°, respectively. The development of deformation microstructures in all the processing routes were characterized by fine lamellar type structure intercepted by inclined shear bands. The TSCCR(45°) processed material appeared to be most prone to shear band formation. The UCR processed material showed brass type texture, while the textures of different cross-rolled materials were featured by different rotated brass components. Upon annealing, the UCR processed material showed the lowest grain size while the highest grain size was observed in the TSCCR(45°) processed material. This indicated greater available nucleation sites in the UCR processed material as compared to the TSCCR(45°) processed material. The differences in annealed grain size was presumably higher due to substructure destabilization and misorientation build-up diminishing the number of potential nuclei in the TSCCR(45°) processed material. The annealing textures of the differently processed materials were featured by the presence of α-fiber (ND//<110>) and absence of preferential nucleation and growth. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd