In this contribution we will report on the progress of the design of the readout and data acquisition system being developed for triple-GEM detectors which will be installed in the forward region (1.5 < |η| < 2.2) of the CMS muon spectrometer during the 2nd long shutdown of the LHC, expected in the period 2017–2018. The system will be designed to take full advantage of current generic developments introduced for the LHC upgrades. The current design is based on the use of CERN GLIB boards hosted in micro-TCA crates for the off-detector electronics and the Versatile Link with the GBT chipset to link the front-end electronics to the GLIB boards. In this contribution we will describe the physics goals, the hardware architectures and report on the expected performance of the CMS GEM readout system, including preliminary timing resolution simulations.