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So I'm working on a martial art fantasy type story, and I was wondering when I should introduce my antagonist. I want to make him someone who mirrors the protagonist so I feel that he should at least be given a physical appearance early. However, the PC isn't going to be fighting against the antagonist (at least directly) until later on.

Depends on the protagonist really, seeing as how the antagonist mirrors him.

If the protagonist was rich/poor then the antagonist would be poor/rich, just replace rich/poor with any character-like quality and you can create the perfect mirror antagonist.

I'd personally say to introduce him early as an ally or good friend before you go your separate ways. When the protagonist returns he finds a very different person who has lived a similar but darker/lighter life than the protagonist did.

Even better just introduce him as some seemingly unimportant character that the protagonist's actions ruined in some way although the protagonist has no knowledge of it or even the antagonist until much later.

A la red-haired, gnome-raised human girl?

Lol, well that's one example.

I was thinking of the Korean movie Old Boy. The antagonist in that movie does some pretty disproportionate retribution for something the protagonist has no memory doing because it just wasn't an important event to him. It pretty much defined the rest of the antagonist's life though.

(Oldboy: The more I think about it, the more I think the American remake really didn't understand anything about the original film.)

I'd have to know more about the antagonist to have an opinion on when he should be introduced.  Does he already have a defined character arc, or are you speaking more generally?

The first story I thought of when you said mirror was Harry Potter- people talk about Voldemort right from the beginning, but the story sets itself up as though Draco will be Harry's primary antagonist at first.

I'm working on a fantasy martial art story and the main character is basically a student at this school blah blah blah. The antagonist is a man who looks to destroy the known world because he believes that he is doing the will of a god.

I didn't know if I should (or how to) introduce this antagonist early or later in the story.

When you say introduce, are you thinking:

MC meets him

MC briefly encounters him/sees him from a distance

MC hears about him from other characters

Info on him is presented in backstory

I wanted the first encounter of this antagonist would be when the MC sees him from a distance.

The story will be centered around accepting/denying fate.