Axions and similar very weakly interacting particles are increasingly compelling candidates for the cold dark matter of the universe. Having very low mass and being produced non-thermally in the early Universe, axions feature extremely high occupatio
n numbers. It has been suggested that this leads to the formation of a Bose-Einstein condensate with potentially significant impact on observation and direct detection experiments. In this note we aim to clarify that if Bose-Einstein condensation occurs for light and very weakly interacting dark matter particles, it does not happen in thermal equilibrium but is described by a far-from-equilibrium state. In particular we point out that the dynamics is characterized by two very different timescales, such that condensation occurs on a much shorter timescale than full thermalization.
