Louis was the son of Ladislaus V Jagiellon and his third wife, Anne de Foix.
After his father's death in 1516, the minor Louis II ascended to the throne of Hungary and Bohemia Upon his father's death Louis had been adopted by Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I in 1515. When Maximilian I died in 1519, Louis was raised by his legal guardian, his cousin Georg von Hohenzollern, margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach.
Louis owed allegiance to the Imperial Habsburgs as a member of the Order of the Golden Fleece.
In 1522 Louis II was married to Mary of Habsburg, a Habsburg princess, granddaughter of Maximilian I, as stipulated by the First Congress of Vienna in 1515. His sister Anne was married to Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, then a governor on behalf of his brother Charles V, and later Emperor Ferdinand I.
On 29 August 1526, Louis was killed in the Battle of Mohács while leading his forces against Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire. He had no legitimate children. Ferdinand was elected as his successor in Kingdom of Bohemia and Hungary, but the Hungarian throne was contested by János Szapolyai, who ruled the areas of the kingdom conquered by the Turks as an Ottoman client.
Although Louis II's marriage remained childless, he probably had an illegitimate child with his mother's former lady-in-waiting, Angelitha Wass before his marriage. This son was called John (János in Hungarian) and his name appears in the sources of the Chamber in Vienna as either János Wass or János Lanthos, which can refer to the fact that he used his mother's name first, then that of his 'jobs's', Lanthos that means 'lutanist, bard'. He received incomes from Royal Treasury regularly. He had further offspring.