Where do end cities spawn in Minecraft?

Only on the outer islands of the End dimension, never on the main island. You reach them through an end gateway portal after defeating the Ender Dragon.

How do you get through an end gateway portal?

Throw an ender pearl into the small bedrock portal. On Java you can also use a trapdoor to crawl through the one-block gap.

How rare is an end ship?

Roughly half of end cities generate with a ship. The ship is where the elytra and dragon head are found, so it is worth bridging to when one appears.

What should you bring to an end city raid?

Bridging blocks, ender pearls, a shield for shulker bullets, strong food and weapons, and fall protection such as slow falling potions or a water bucket.

How to Find an End City in Minecraft

Everything a late-game player wants sits in one structure. The elytra, the dragon head, shulker shells, enchanted diamond gear: all of it waits in end cities, scattered across the outer End. The structure is not especially rare once you know where to look. The real challenge is that most players never learn how to leave the main island at all.

Step 1: Reach the Outer End

Travel to the End through a stronghold's end portal and kill the Ender Dragon.
Look around the edge of the main island for an end gateway: a small floating frame of bedrock with a portal block at its center, too small to walk into.
Throw an ender pearl into the gateway. (On Java you can also crawl through using a trapdoor.)
You will teleport to the outer islands, roughly a thousand blocks from the center of the dimension.

There is no way back except another gateway, which generates where you arrive, so mark its location. From here the End becomes an archipelago of floating islands separated by void, and cities only generate out here.

Step 2: Search the Islands

End cities are built from end stone bricks and purpur blocks, tall towers linked by bridges and staircases, and they stand out against the pale landscape once you are close. The efficient search pattern is simple: bridge toward the largest islands, skip the tiny ones, and travel in a consistent direction rather than wandering. Chorus forests and empty islands are common; cities are not on every island, so expect a journey of several hundred to a few thousand blocks.

Bring plenty of cheap bridging blocks, ender pearls for emergencies, and a water bucket or slow falling potions, because the void, not the mobs, is the main killer out here.

Step 3: The Command Shortcut

With cheats enabled, stand in the End and run /locate structure minecraft:end_city. The game returns the nearest city's coordinates, and you can bridge or teleport straight there. Seed-map tools such as Chunkbase do the same job from outside the game if you know your world seed, and can show every city in the dimension at once.

Raiding the City and Its Ship

The city's guards are shulkers, box-shaped mobs fixed to walls and floors whose homing bullets make you levitate. Fight them with a shield up, and keep an eye on the levitation timer so the fall does not finish their job. Kill shulkers for their shells: two shells plus a chest make a shulker box, portable storage that keeps its contents when broken.

About half of cities spawn with an end ship floating nearby, reached by bridging or pearling from the tallest tower. The ship is the real prize vault: an elytra hangs in an item frame in the treasure room, guarded by a shulker, with a dragon head mounted on the prow outside. Grab both, loot the chests of enchanted gear and diamonds, and pearl back carefully. You now own the best transport item in the game.