The international CTA consortium has recently entered the preparatory phase towards the construction of the next-generation Cherenkov Telescope Array CTA. This experiment will be a successor to and will benefit from the return of experience from the three major current-generation arrays H.E.S.S., MAGIC and VERITAS. It aims to significantly improve upon the sensitivity as well as the energy range of its highly successful predecessors. Construction is planned to begin by 2014, and when finished, CTA will be able to explore the highest-energy gamma-ray sky in unprecedented detail. The current status of the CTA project is presented,
together with its expected performance based on Monte Carlo studies
