Abstract We report on the redshift of the BL Lac object 3FGL J0909.0+2310 based on observations obtained with the OSIRIS Multi-Object Spectrograph (MOS) mounted on the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio Canarias. A redshift of 0.432 ± 0.002 was obtained by the identification of three absorption features (Ca ii K&H and the G band) detected in the spectrum of the BL Lac host galaxy. The closest object to the BL Lac at an angular separation of 3.8 arcsec (∼21 kpc at this distance) has a similar redshift of 0.431 ± 0.002. This companion galaxy could be the most likely cause of the nuclear activity as postulated by studies based on more extended data sets and cosmological models. MOS allows us to study the object's neighbourhood within a field of view of approximately 7 × 2 arcmin2 and we find two small groups of galaxies at redshifts 0.28 and 0.39 which are probably not related to the activity of 3FGL J0909.0+2310.