The construction of the GTC (Gran Telescopio Canarias) on La Palma, Canary Islands, is well under way with first light planned for October 2003. All subsystems are developed and are now in the fabrication or commissioning phase. Apart from the suite of instruments, this paper discusses the design and procurement of the CCD camera systems, which are designed for the close-loop active optics and the acquisition and guiding purposes of the telescope (wavefront sensors and guiding cameras) and for in-house developed scientific instrumentation. Furthermore, we describe our test bench facility for CCD evaluation up to surface sizes equivalent to a 4Kx4K, 15 μm detector.