The electroencephalogram (EEG) signal plays a key role in the diagnosis of epilepsy. This study describes an automated classification of EEG signal for the detection of Epilepsy disease using soft computing methods. The proposed method is comprised of three modules: (a) transformation, (b) feature computation, and (c) feature classifications. In the first module, the nonsubsampled contourlet transform is applied on the EEG signal which decomposes the signal into approximate and directional subbands. The decomposition is done using nonsubsampled pyramid filter bank and nonsubsampled directional filter bank respectively. Secondly, the statistical features are extracted from the decomposed directional subbands using wavelet packet decomposition method. Finally, these features are classified by adaptive neuro‐Fuzzy inference system classification method, which classifies the EEG signal into either focal or nonfocal signal. The proposed method is tested on a set of EEG signals for validation. The average classification rate of the proposed EEG signal classification system is 99.4%. The proposed EEG signal classification methodology achieves a sensitivity of 99.7%, a specificity of 99.7%, and an accuracy of 99.4%. The results confirmed that the proposed method has a potential in the classification of EEG signals and thereby could further improve the diagnosis of epilepsy.