By utilizing the three distinctive approaches specifically, the extended Fan sub-equation method, the exp[ $$-G(\xi )$$ ]-function expansion method, and the fractional transformation method, the traveling waves and soliton solutions of the (4+1)-dimensional nonlinear Fokas equation are extracted. Meanwhile, some parametric constraint conditions are described. The acquired solutions are singular and nonsingular soliton solutions, periodic solutions, breather solution, rational solutions, trigonometric periodic wave solutions, hyperbolic solutions, Weierstrass, and Jacobi elliptic doubly periodic wave solutions. The dynamics of some of the obtained solutions are investigated and described in 2-dimensional figures by choosing appropriate parameter values. The comparison of our obtained results with the other solutions in literature shows that the obtained solutions of this paper are new and have not been formulated before by other techniques. We believe that all these results are useful to enrich the knowledge of the important physical phenomenon characterized by the Fokas equation. The reported solutions illustrate the straightforwardness, reliability, and effectiveness of the used techniques that can be further employed to higher-dimensional nonlinear evolution equations.