This paper presents a comparative study of six soft computing models namely multilayer perceptron networks, Elman recurrent neural network, radial basis function network, Hopfield model, fuzzy inference system and hybrid fuzzy neural network for the hourly electricity demand forecast of Czech Republic. The soft computing models were trained and tested using the actual hourly load data for seven years. A comparison of the proposed techniques is presented for predicting 2 day ahead demands for electricity. Simulation results indicate that hybrid fuzzy neural network and radial basis function networks are the best candidates for the analysis and forecasting of electricity demand.