Random City Generator

Need a random U.S. city? Use this random city generator to instantly pick from more than 950 real cities and towns across all 50 states. Choose any state, stick to major cities or state capitals, generate up to 10 cities at once, or add your own list.

How to Use the Random City Generator

Choose All U.S. Cities to pick from the full list, or narrow things down to major cities or state capitals. You can also select an individual state if you only want cities from one part of the country.

Choose whether you want 1, 3, 5, or 10 cities, then select Pick a Random City.

Turn on No repeats if you don’t want the same place appearing twice. This is particularly useful for classroom games, research activities, or when you’re working through a longer list.

You can also choose My List and add your own cities or places. The generator will randomly choose from whatever you enter.

What Can You Use a Random City Generator For?

There are plenty of reasons you might need a completely random city rather than one you would naturally choose yourself.

For geography practice, generate a city and ask students to locate it on a map, name the state, identify its region, or find a nearby landmark.

For writing, use the result as a character’s hometown, story setting, road-trip stop, or starting point for a research project. It works particularly well as a quick random hometown generator when nobody can decide where a fictional character should live.

You can also use it as a simple random place generator when planning a game, choosing a pretend vacation destination, comparing different parts of the United States, or just seeing where chance takes you.

Generating several cities at once also makes it easy to create quiz questions, compare locations, or give different students their own place to research.

Pick a Random City and State

Every result from the main U.S. city lists includes the city together with its two-letter state abbreviation, such as:

• Austin, TX
• Boise, ID
• Savannah, GA

You can leave the state set to All States for a completely random result or choose one specific state to generate cities from that area only.

The full generator contains more than 950 U.S. cities and towns, giving you considerably more variety than the previous version of this tool.

Random State Capitals

Select State Capitals when you only want to choose from the 50 U.S. state capitals.

This is handy for state-capital practice because students can generate a capital and then identify its state, find it on a map, or research something about the city.

For more U.S. geography practice, pair the generator with these state coloring pages or our United States facts worksheet.

Geography Activities to Try

Our free geography worksheets work well alongside the generator when you want to turn a random result into a larger activity.

Use the North America worksheets to place the city within the wider continent, or the American landmarks worksheets to explore famous places around the country.

If New York City appears, the Statue of Liberty worksheets are an easy extension activity.

You don’t need to turn every result into a full lesson, though. Sometimes finding the city on a map and seeing what state it belongs to is enough.

Add Your Own Cities

The My List option turns the tool into your own custom city picker.

Add one city or place per line and the generator will choose randomly from your list. These don’t have to be U.S. cities, so you can also add world capitals, vacation destinations, fictional locations, or any other places you’re choosing between.

This is also useful when you already have a shortlist and simply want the generator to make the final decision.

Other Random Generators

For somewhere outside the United States, try the random country generator to pick a country and explore somewhere new.

You can also use the random letter generator for word games and writing prompts, or add your own names to the random name picker when you need to choose someone fairly.

For group activities, the random team generator quickly splits names into teams, while the random color generator is useful for art activities, games, and random color choices.

Browse our free random generators for more games, creative ideas, classroom activities, and useful tools.

Last Updated on 26 August 2026 by Clare Brown