First of all decide how manychannels you want.
A "basic" surround system, designated 5.1 comprises five speakers plus a subwoofer. The five speakers are front left, front right, centre, surround (not back) left, surround (not back) right.
Go to 7.1 and you add two back speakers.
From there on it gets more complicated, as you'll be adding "height" or "wide" fronts and / or overhead speakers for what is usally called "Dolby Atmos".
What Atoms and its competitor DTS:X do is add, subject to the right discs, an overhead effect to the sound field. So when, say, the Millenium Falcon flies into view from "behind", it sounds like its flying overhead. Not all Blu-Rays come with Atmos, mind you, so check the labels on the ones you buy, if you want to use Atmos. I only have three - Star Trek Beyond (beyond what? beyond even the most powerful drugs, that's what), 10 Cloverfield Land and Season Five of Game of Thrones, but there are others, often very expensive) "Special editions" like Gravity, The Martian, etc.
Most receivers come with Atmos nowadays, and they'll be designated X.Y.Z where X is the number of around-the-walls channels, Y is the number of subwoofers supported without recourse to splitter cables, and Z is the number of overhead channels. The more channels you have, the more the receiver will cost, naturally.
Now you have a basic shopping list for AV receivers. Decide if you want wifi, wired network, bluetooth, etc. to help with streaming. Now your shopping list got smaller. Then decide on a brand (or stable - Denon and Marantz are one stable, Pioneer and Onkyo another) and go look and listen at your local Currys, John Lewis, or hifi shoppe.
You should look for your receiver to have HDMI2.0, HDCP2.2, 4K and HDR pass-through (possibly uspcaling as well). These are the latest standards for TV signals and your receiver won't be usable in a couple of years, now even with a 4K TV, if it doesn't have them. Most 2015 onwards models shoudl be okay, but check ALL the HDMI inputs, not just one or two, have these capabilities. The latest audio codec list is as long as your arm, but if it has Dolby Digital, Dolby Atmos and DTS:X you're in good shape. DTS:X is a long-awaited firmware update for most receivers. Some of us think you've got more chance of seeing Lord Lucan riding Shergar through your local Currys than it ever showing up, but....
If you've got a good stereo setup, which you seem to have, you need to think about AV receivers with pre-amp outputs. That way, your stereo speakers double up as the front left and front right speakers in your surround sound system. That obviously saves money and means you don't have to have two pairs of big floorstanders or bookshelf speakers. But it does mean the stereo speakers have to be either side of the TV, as close as possible to equal distances. You use the pre-amp outputs from the receiver to feed into the "Aux" or "AV" inputs on your stereo amp and Robert's your father's brother.
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