Altermagnets, which encompass a broad landscape of materials, are compensated collinear magnetic phases in which the antiparallel magnetic moments are related by a crystalline rotation. Here, we argue that collinear altermagneticlike states can also be realized in lattices with an odd number of sublattices, provided that the electronic interactions promote nonuniform magnetic moments. We demonstrate this idea for a kagome metal whose band filling places the Fermi level close to the van Hove singularity. Combining phenomenological and microscopic modeling, we show that the intertwined charge density-wave and loop-current instabilities of this model lead to a wide parameter range in which orbital ferromagnetic, antiferromagnetic, and altermagnetic phases emerge inside the charge-ordered state. In the presence of spin-orbit coupling, their electronic structures display the usual spin-split fingerprints associated with the three types of collinear magnetic order. We discuss the possible realization of orbital altermagnetic phases in the ${A\mathrm{V}}_3{\mathrm{Sb}}_5$ family of kagome metals.

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• Charge order
• Landau theory
• Magnetic order
• Van Hove singularity
• Altermagnets
• Kagome metal
• Lattice models in condensed matter