In the title monomeric manganese(II) complex, [Mn(CH3COO)2(C10H8N2)(H2O)2], the metal ion is coordinated by a bidentate 2,2'-bi-pyridine (bpy) ligand, two water mol-ecules and two axial acetate anions, resulting in a highly distorted octa-hedral environment. The aqua ligands are stabilized by the formation of strong intra-molecular hydrogen bonds with the uncoordinated acetate O atoms, giving rise to pseudo-bridging arrangement of the terminal acetate groups. In the crystal, the mol-ecules form [010] zigzag chains via O-H⋯O hydrogen bonds involving the aqua ligands and acetate O atoms. Further, the water and bpy ligands are trans to each other, and are arranged in an off-set fashion showing inter-molecular π-π stacking between nearly parallel bi-py rings, the centroid-centroid separations being 3.8147 (12) and 3.9305 (13) Å.