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It's a good idea to pick a relatively popular distro, since it will be easier to find answers to your questions and since having more users/developers tends to result in fewer bugs. Look at lists of popular distros, filter by your requirements and preferences, and try them out.

You said you wanted more up-to-date software. If you want to be on the bleeding edge, you might want to consider a rolling release distro, such as Arch or its derivatives. Arch is great if you want to hand-craft your installation starting from a bare-bones tty. If that's too much trouble, something like Manjaro or EndeavorOS will give you up-to-date packages but with an easier installer and more preinstalled packages.

If you don't want a rolling release, there are other distros which release more frequently than Debian stable. Ubuntu releases every six months (although anecdotally most users seem to stick with the LTS releases). Fedora releases every six months or so. openSUSE Leap releases every twelve months or so.