It was discovered visually with 10×50 binoculars on February 19, 1992, by Peter Collins, an amateur astronomer living in Boulder, Colorado.

Images from the Palomar Sky Survey taken before the nova event showed identified a possible precursor which had photographic magnitudes of 18 (blue light) and 17 (red light), but the identification of the precursor is not firm.

[8][9] V1974 Cygni declined from peak brightness by three magnitudes in 43 days, making it a "fast" nova.

[12] It was also studied with the Hubble Space Telescope instrument the High Speed Photometer.

In the case of V1974 Cygni, the binary's orbital period is 1 hour, 57 minutes.