Showing a .gif animation in QLabel

you can add a Layout to the label, and then add another Label with the text to that...

self.status_txt = QtGui.QLabel()
movie = QtGui.QMovie("etc/loading.gif")
self.status_txt.setMovie(movie)
movie.start()
self.status_txt.setLayout(QtGui.QHBoxLayout())
self.status_txt.layout().addWidget(QLabel('Loading...'))

edit:

it's possible if you use your own version of a QLabel and a QPainter to paint the text yourself:

from PyQt4.QtCore import QSize
from PyQt4.QtGui import QApplication, QLabel, QMovie, QPainter, QFontMetrics

class QTextMovieLabel(QLabel):
    def __init__(self, text, fileName):
        QLabel.__init__(self)
        self._text = text
        m = QMovie(fileName)
        m.start()
        self.setMovie(m)

    def setMovie(self, movie):
        QLabel.setMovie(self, movie)
        s=movie.currentImage().size()
        self._movieWidth = s.width()
        self._movieHeight = s.height()

    def paintEvent(self, evt):
        QLabel.paintEvent(self, evt)
        p = QPainter(self)
        p.setFont(self.font())
        x = self._movieWidth + 6
        y = (self.height() + p.fontMetrics().xHeight()) / 2
        p.drawText(x, y, self._text)
        p.end()

    def sizeHint(self):
        fm = QFontMetrics(self.font())
        return QSize(self._movieWidth + 6 + fm.width(self._text),
                self._movieHeight)

    def setText(self, text):
        self._text = text

if __name__ == '__main__':
    import sys
    app = QApplication(sys.argv)
    l = QTextMovieLabel('Loading...', 'loading.gif')
    l.show()
    app.exec_()

Short, to the point answer:

movie = QtGui.QMovie('file.gif')
my_label.setMovie(movie)
movie.start()

Note that the import statement in this case is from PyQt5 import QtCore, QtGui, QtWidgets which is the default generated by Qt Designer.

I have found that there is not possible way to use the same widget for this job. Two different QLabels must be used.