Development on the series began in August 2016 under the working title 'Motherland,' with a pilot ordered in June 2018 before Freeform gave it a straight-to-series order of ten episodes in March 2019.

The show's executive producers included comedy figures Will Ferrell and Adam McKay through their production company Gary Sanchez Productions, alongside creator Eliot Laurence.

Kelcey Mawema originally played one of the lead roles in the pilot but was recast, with Ashley Nicole Williams announced as her replacement (as Abigail Bellweather) in March 2019.

Linguist David J. Peterson, known for creating languages for Game of Thrones, worked with Jessie Sams to invent Méníshè, an 'ancient witch language' spoken by the nomadic Tarim tribe in the series.

Principal photography for the first season took place in Vancouver, British Columbia, from April to August 2019, with additional filming in the Cloverdale area of Surrey, BC, on May 9–10, 2019.

In the United Kingdom, the series is titled 'Fort Salem' instead of 'Motherland: Fort Salem' to avoid confusion with the unrelated BBC sitcom 'Motherland.'

The first season received a 71% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 17 critics, with the consensus noting that its ambitious ideas were 'overwhelmed by the sheer too-muchness of it all,' while Metacritic gave it a 'mixed or average' score of 49/100.