How to Find an End City in Minecraft

Guide Java Bedrock

Quick answer: After beating the Ender Dragon, throw an ender pearl into the floating end gateway to reach the outer End islands, then explore until you spot the tall purpur towers - about half of them have an End Ship with an elytra in an item frame.

An End city with chorus plants in Minecraft — End city. Gameplay screenshot by Dabmasterars via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.

What you need

Ender pearls (one per gateway crossing)
Slow Falling potions or water bucket
Shield
Stack of blocks for bridging
Pickaxe and food
Elytra + fireworks for further trips

Step by step

Defeat the Ender Dragon. This activates the central exit portal and spawns an end gateway (a floating bedrock structure with a portal block) around the main island's edge - up to 20 gateways as you kill more dragons.
Bring: ender pearls (for gateways), slow-falling potions or a water bucket, blocks for bridging, a pickaxe (for purpur and shulker-proof mining), food, and empty shulker boxes if you have them.
Throw an ender pearl into the gateway (or build a trapdoor/elytra contraption through the 1-block gap) to teleport roughly 1,000 blocks out to the outer islands.
Explore: End cities generate on the big outer islands. Look for the distinctive purple purpur towers with End Rods. Chunkbase's End City finder with your seed saves hours.
Loot carefully: shulkers camouflage as purpur and their bullets inflict Levitation - carry a shield to block bullets and slow falling to survive float-offs. Kill shulkers for shulker shells (2 make a shulker box).
If the city has an End Ship (a floating boat beside the tallest tower), grab the elytra from the item frame in the hull, the dragon head from the bow, and loot the two chests - the best gear in the game (enchanted diamond/iron).
Mark the coordinates of every city and gateway you find. With an elytra and fireworks, the return trip is minutes.

Java vs Bedrock

Identical in Java and Bedrock: gateway teleporting, city generation, shulkers and the ship's elytra work the same. Bedrock shulker bullets home slightly more aggressively. End cities appear in about half of generated city sites with ships roughly half the time.

Versions: End cities were added in 1.9 (Combat Update). Mechanics unchanged in current versions (26.3).

Frequently asked questions

How rare are End cities?

They generate scattered across the outer End islands, typically thousands of blocks apart. Expect a long search without an elytra - Chunkbase with your seed pinpoints them exactly.

Does every End city have an elytra?

No. Only End Ships contain elytra, and only some cities have a ship. Keep exploring - with a few cities looted you will have several elytra.

Can you find an End city without killing the dragon?

Technically yes by bridging or flying thousands of blocks from the main island, but the dragon fight is far easier. The gateways only open after each dragon kill.