Modern wind turbines turn their blades along their primary axis to control the conversion ofaerodynamic power. The pitch bearings connect the rotor hub of the turbine with the bladesand allow this rotation. They are large slewing bearings with diameters in the range of 2 - 7 m.In comparison to bearings in other applications, pitch bearings suffer from three particularities:Oscillating movements instead of full rotations, dynamic and stochastic loads in five degrees offreedom instead of controlled loads, and interface parts with low and complex stiffness along thecircumference instead of almost stiff connections.The capital costs of the bearings and even more the costs connected to failures make it paramountto mitigate operational risks of new designs. As there are no established calculation methods forthe most dominant damage modes of pitch bearings, bearing tests are of critical value to this riskmitigation.This work covers the design of endurance test runs for pitch bearings. A true endurance test runof pitch bearings should result in a profound evaluation of the risk of failure during the lifetime ofthe wind turbine. This goal makes the design of an endurance run a substantial task. It gets evenmore challenging when such a test run needs to fit into the overall turbine design process, both inmatters of timing and finance.This work results in a test run profile that covers wear and fatigue damage modes of the bearingrollers and raceways, among others. It also covers the development and commissioning of the testenvironment for different bearing sizes. The IWT7.5-164 reference turbine serves as example forthe design of the test environment and the test run.