It was discovered by the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (which assigned to it the name ASASSN-16ma) on 25.02 October 2016, at which time it had an apparent visual magnitude of 13.7.

[7] It was independently discovered by Yukio Sakurai of Mito, Ibaraki, Japan on 26.38 October 2016, by which time it had reached magnitude 10.4.

[8] It reached its peak brightness of magnitude 5.4, making it visible to the naked eye, on 8 November 2016.

[4] The nova occurred within a region of the sky monitored by the OGLE microlensing experiment, and that group reported that no star brighter than magnitude 22 (I band) was seen at the nova's position prior to its eruption.

In the case of V5856 Sagittarii, the absence of a detection of a progenitor in the OGLE images suggests that the donor is a dwarf star.