  High-energy gamma rays are promising tools to constrain or reveal the nature
of dark matter, in particular Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. Being well
into its pre-construction phase, the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will soon
probe the sky in the 20 GeV - 300 TeV energy range. Thanks to its improved
energy and angular resolutions as well as significantly larger effective area
when compared to the current generation of Cherenkov telescopes, CTA is
expected to probe heavier dark matter, with unprecedented sensitivity, reaching
the thermal annihilation cross-section at ~1 TeV.
  This talk will summarise the planned dark matter search strategies with CTA,
focusing on the signal from the Galactic centre. As observed with the Fermi LAT
at lower energies, this region is rather complex and CTA will be the first
ground-based observatory sensitive to the large scale diffuse astrophysical
emission from that region. We report on the collaboration effort to study the
impact of such extended astrophysical backgrounds on the dark matter search,
based on Fermi-LAT data in order to guide our observational strategies, taking
into account various sources of systematic uncertainty.
