He was the son of Duke Louis V of Bavaria with Countess Margaret of Tyrol and as such also the last descendant of the Tyrolean branch of the House of Gorizia (Meinhardiner dynasty).
After the sudden death of Louis V in 1361, his seventeen-year-old son ascended to rule in Upper Bavaria and in the County of Tyrol, in which he was strongly influenced by the Bavarian nobility.
He fled to the court of the Prince-Bishop of Eichstätt, was temporarily arrested in Munich and finally retired to the Tyrolean home lands of his mother, possibly with the help of the Habsburg duke Rudolf IV of Austria.
His early death induced his mother Margaret to deny the inheritance claims raised by Count Meinhard VI of Gorizia and the House of Wittelsbach, when she ceded Tyrol to Duke Rudolf IV of Austria.
Therefore, Meinhard's uncle Stephen II of Bavaria-Landshut, who had succeeded him in Upper Bavaria, invaded Tyrol but finally released the county in 1369, in return for a huge financial compensation.