Abstract The mass of the top quark is measured in 36.3 $$\,\text {fb}^{-1}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mspace/> <mml:msup> <mml:mtext>fb</mml:mtext> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>-</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> of LHC proton–proton collision data collected with the CMS detector at $$\sqrt{s}=13\,\text {Te}\hspace{-.08em}\text {V} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:msqrt> <mml:mi>s</mml:mi> </mml:msqrt> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>13</mml:mn> <mml:mspace/> <mml:mtext>Te</mml:mtext> <mml:mspace/> <mml:mtext>V</mml:mtext> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> . The measurement uses a sample of top quark pair candidate events containing one isolated electron or muon and at least four jets in the final state. For each event, the mass is reconstructed from a kinematic fit of the decay products to a top quark pair hypothesis. A profile likelihood method is applied using up to four observables per event to extract the top quark mass. The top quark mass is measured to be $$171.77\pm 0.37\,\text {Ge}\hspace{-.08em}\text {V} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>171.77</mml:mn> <mml:mo>±</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0.37</mml:mn> <mml:mspace/> <mml:mtext>Ge</mml:mtext> <mml:mspace/> <mml:mtext>V</mml:mtext> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> . This approach significantly improves the precision over previous measurements.