France has postponed the highly symbolic state visit by the UK’s King Charles III that was due to begin on Sunday because of the escalating protest movement against President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age.

The delay is an embarrassing setback for Macron, who has staked his reformist credentials in his second term on raising the retirement age in the face of widespread opposition.

The King’s visit was also intended to cap a diplomatic push, including the Franco-British summit earlier this month with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, to showcase warming relations between the two countries after years of Brexit-related tensions.

The Élysée Palace said Macron and King Charles had spoken by phone about the trip, which had been due to run from Sunday to Wednesday and include a dinner at the ornate Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, a parade on the Champs-Élysées with a 140 horse-mounted Republican guards and a trip to Bordeaux.

“The visit will be rescheduled as soon as possible,” said the Élysée. The planned trip’s second leg, a visit to Germany, is expected to go ahead, making that journey the King’s first trip overseas as monarch.

Buckingham Palace, the UK royals’ official residence, confirmed that the visit by the King and his wife Camilla, Queen Consort, had been “postponed”. “Their majesties greatly look forward to the opportunity to visit France as soon as dates can be found,” the palace said.

The delay was prompted by a growing sense among French officials that both the logistics and the optics of the state visit were becoming untenable.

More than 1mn people protested in largely peaceful nationwide demonstrations on Thursday called by labour unions, but by nightfall, chaotic scenes broke out in Paris and elsewhere.

Protesters set about 900 fires in Paris alone, using the tonnes of uncollected rubbish that have accumulated because of strikes. In Bordeaux, unidentified people set the wooden doors of the town hall ablaze on Thursday.

Unions have called another day of mobilisation on Tuesday, which would have coincided with King’s trip, making security a big challenge. France had planned to deploy 4,000 police officers to secure the visit.

Another factor was criticism that the pomp and grandeur of the King’s visit was inappropriate at a time of widespread public anger — a viewpoint pushed by leftwing politicians opposed to Macron and his pensions reform. The UK royal family is relatively popular in France despite the country’s revolutionary past, but even some Macron allies admitted privately that hosting the lavish event was risky.

Downing Street had been monitoring the situation in France with Buckingham Palace and was braced for changes in the royal itinerary, but British officials stressed that King Charles was ready to go ahead.

“We were ready to go,” said one. “The request to call it off came from Paris on Friday morning and we jointly agreed. But it is their situation — they are the ones gauging events on the ground.”

Macron told a news conference in Brussels on Friday: “It would have been a lack of common sense to carry on with the state visit in the middle of the demonstrations.”

The president reiterated his defence of the pensions overhaul, and said France and the government needed to move on with other reforms as well. “We must continue to advance. Our country cannot stand still,” he said.

Macron has long argued that pension reform is necessary to ensure the viability of France’s retirement system as the population ages. If finalised, the plan will raise the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64, and require people to work for 43 years to receive a full pension.

The protest movement has become more unpredictable since Macron’s government chose this month to push through the pensions law without a parliamentary vote. The government survived no-confidence votes on Monday following that decision, but public anger has continued to fester.

Labour unions, which have largely controlled nationwide protests since January, are now struggling to keep a lid on more radical activists, including a small hardcore of anarchists and thugs known as casseurs, who often join big protests.

Leftwing French political leaders, who had called for the cancellation of the King’s visit, celebrated their victory. Far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who often criticises Macron as a top-down authoritarian ruler, said in a tweet: “The meeting of the kings at Versailles has been scuppered by popular censure.”

Communist leader Fabien Roussel posted on Twitter an ironic jab at the president, who has refused to back down on his pensions reform: “Macron has found his reverse gear after all.”

Additional reporting by George Parker and Domitille Alain