The game was unofficially revealed through a YouTube video on December 5, 2014, which was promptly taken down. It was officially revealed the next day during the 2014 PlayStation Experience in Las Vegas and was announced as being developed exclusively for the PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows.

The idea of a fighter who uses poison in the Street Fighter games was originally considered during the development of Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, when the team members had a debate on including Remy (a character with a playstyle similar to Guile's) or a different, poison-using character.

Capcom eventually decided to implement this idea with the SFV newcomer, F.A.N.G.

The creation of newcomer Rashid was a close collaboration between Capcom Japan, Sony, and Capcom's Middle Eastern distributor Pluto Games. Katsuhiro Harada, the producer of rival fighting game series Tekken, also encouraged Yoshinori Ono to include a Middle Eastern fighter in the Street Fighter main games.

The game originally had a more realistic look during it's early stages of development.

The game's E3 demo and initial release had a glitch on the character select screen. If the second player chose a female character, their breasts would bounce excessively. Capcom later released a patch to correct the bug.

Several stage elements as well entire stages themselves were cut completely from the final game. For example, Mike Haggar from the Final Fight series was going to appear on Karin's stage via an elevator that would automatically go up and down, but was cut for being "too random". An example of a stage being cut completely was a military base that contained huge robots and aliens, which was removed for having little to no relation with the storyline.

It's possible to access Urien's Street Fighter III costume in game. During the loading screen, holding LP, MK, and HP will alter his intro animation to him burning off his current costume, revealing his classic costume.

Tiffany Lords from the Rival Schools series makes a background cameo in the downloadable Kanzuki Family Private Beach stage along with Hinata Wakaba.

The characters Cody, Guy, Mike Haggar, and Maki from the Final Fight series make a cameo in the "Union Station" background in a banner on the top left of the stage. Additionally, Eisbahn, a character from the rhythm battle RPG game Otoranger (also developed by Capcom) makes a cameo as well on a banner seen on the left of the stage.

A character based on Momotaru from Capcom's puzzle game Pirate Ship Higemaru was considered as a playable character for the game. Birdie was chosen over him in the end, however. Momotaru was instead given a profile in the Capcom Fighters Network's character reference on August 29, 2016.

The CPT costumes from 2016 and 2017 were inspired by old promotional artwork by artist Kinu Nishimura.

Early concept art for F.A.N.G had originally depicted him as a Shaolin Monk.

On April 25th 2017, the Temple Hideout stage was removed as it featured a Muslim prayer voice sample from an audio collection known as "Voice Spectral: Volume one", which some argued did not fit the stage, a Buddhist temple. Capcom decided to temporarily remove the stage and publish it again on May 31st 2017 with a different theme.

Birdie's early design in the game was nearly identical to his original appearance in the original Street Fighter game, being portrayed as a tall, muscular white/light-skinned man with a normal blonde mohawk.

The earliest design of Laura bore a near resemblance to Street Fighter EX fighter Pullum Purna, a later design had her more closely resembling her brother Sean.

Concept artwork shows that Rashid nearly resembled a cyborg, with a orange and yellow belt and some sort of dispenser on his left arm.

Early concept art originally depicted Necalli as a Sasquatch-like creature.

Zeku's design had gone through several different changes during it's development. Among those scrapped concepts include a demon slayer and a fighter who is ''skilled at picking up random items and turning them into make-shift weapons''.

Vega's original V-Trigger consisted of Vega calling down a steel cage that he could climb up and attack from in a similar vein to his stage in Street Fighter II and Street Fighter Alpha 3. It was never implemented, because the cost of implementing the move would be too high.

Dhalsim's V-Skill originally consisted of him forcibly switching positions with the opponent, making it effective against projectile characters.

This move wasn't as good as the developers originally envisioned, and it proved frustrating for players, so this move wasn't included in the released game.