N-soliton solutions and the bilinear form of the (2 + 1)-dimensional AKNS equation are obtained by using the Hirota method. Moreover, the double Wronskian solution and generalized double Wronskian solution are constructed through the Wronskian technique. Furthermore, rational solutions, Matveev solutions and complexitons of the (2 + 1)-dimensional AKNS equation are given through a matrix method for constructing double Wronskian entries. The three solutions are new.