How to enter unicode characters in a UILabel in Interface Builder?

Yes, you can click "Edit" > "Special Characters…" — there you can find all unicode characters (including the emoji) and copy/paste them where you set the label text in Interface Builder.

EDIT: In Xcode 6 it's "Edit" > "Emoji & Characters"

Xcode 7+: "Edit" > "Emoji & Symbols"

For those who tried doing it programmatically, but failed, just use this:

label.text = @"\U0001F50A";

Do it programmatically.

Declare an IBOutlet for the Label, with the means of NSString type:

// UTF-8 Hexadecimal Encoding
NSString *myString = [NSString stringWithUTF8String:"0xF09F948A"];

myLabel.text = myString;

Also, take a look at this question.

In Xcode 8/Swift 3 the easiest is to use the unicode escape:

let a = "\u{1F50A}"